Vol. 6, No. 3, January 24, 2026

Week 3

Day 15 - Asymmetrical.

I used a piece of scrap paper that had been partially run through a crimper. Then I drew a mini optical illusion example following my 2nd grade lesson plan.

Day 16 - Blue.

I had been hearing something scrape outside my house recently; today I checked it out and realized that my wasp trap was falling apart. I took it down and decided to repurpose the now blue paper. I colored it with oil pastel, crayons, and markers.

Day 17 - Giant.

I am currently in the middle of a dinosaur drawing unit with my kindergarteners. We began by reading "The Day of the Dinosaur" by Stan and Jan Berenstain. I've read the book so many times now that I nearly have it memorized and when I read today's prompt I immediately started saying..."The giant brontosaurus was seventy feet tall. Its name means ‘thunder lizard.’ It was the biggest one of all." So here is my brontosaurus drawn with markers on an old envelope. 

Day 18 - Tiny.

When I thought so something tiny, my mind went back to my embroidery and specifically to the ant. Since I couldn't cut the ant out of my project, I had to sew a new one. I found a scrap of fabric and opted for gold thread. The ant kinda looks more like a spider, but either way it is tiny.

Day 19 - Black and White.

Tomorrow my 5th graders will be beginning a unit looking at African Art and creating zentangle style images inspired by African patterns. Their drawings will black and white; so I created a mini zentangle to get in the mood for the lesson.

Day 20 - Curved.

A simple curved line drawing, that was created as a meditation during a workshop I attended a couple years ago.

Day 21 -  Mammal.

My first thought of a mammal was a squirrel and conveniently today is Squirrel Appreciation Day, so it made sense to draw one. Made with crayons on paper.

Vol. 6, No. 2, January 17, 2026

Week 2

I decided this would be photography week. All of the papers used in the collage were photographs that were printed to be entered in Open Class at the County Fair.

Day 8 - Sunset

While this isn't my favorite sunset picture, it was the best one I had printed that I was willing to sacrifice to a collage.

Day 9 - White

A winter scene much like today, with lots of white.

Day 10 - Ground

I believe this is a picture of a leaf in the water at Gooseberry Falls.

Day 11 - Green

The Northern Lights reflecting in a snowy field creating a green glow all around.

Day 12 - Wet

Wet rocks of a waterfall.

Day 13 - Smooth

A bowl of oranges photographed through vases of water, creating a refracted image. 

Day 14 - Symmetrical 

A mayfly on a car, creating symmetry in the reflection. 

Vol. 6, No. 1, January 10, 2026

The blog is back! My goal for the year is to make/find one small artwork everyday following the prompts provided in the Wild Kids Magazine Photo Challenge. At the end of the week, I will use those artworks to create a 3"x3" collage. I hope to put those 52 collages together into one large artwork at the end of the year.

Bonus Week

I realized after making this initial collage that I should have waited a full 7 days. Therefore, I incorporated the scraps from this bonus collage into my Week 1 collage.

Week 1

Day 1 - New

I decided to look through my art supplies and find something I had never used before. I found a KiwiCo Tinker Crate Spin Art Machine that was given to my many years ago that I had assembled, but never used. Fortunately, the paint still worked and the spin art was easy to make.

Day 2 - Broken

I always tell my students "broken crayons still color". So for this project, I pulled out my bin of broken "naked" crayons. I chose the same 4 colors I had used for the spin art, grated them on the the paper and placed it on a hot plate to warm. I also colored directly on the paper while it was heating.

Day 3 - Bark

This one took me a minute to figure out, but then I remembered that I has some birch logs in the garage that have been waiting to be used. I peeled off a small section of bark and then slowly peeled that apart into thinner sheets. After washing, drying and pressing the birch bark papers, they were ready to use.

Day 4 - Leaf

I considered doing a texture rubbing of a leaf, but then I remembered my collection of pressed flowers and leaves. I pulled out the box and carefully looked through each paper towel selecting my favorite leaves; I couldn't choose just one. I am fairly certain that some, if not all, of these leaves are relics of my childhood (pre-2007) harvested, placed between paper towels, and pressed within the pages of a JcPenny catalog with assistance from Granny, my maternal grandmother.

Day 5 - Shadow

I knew that I had some Nature Print Paper somewhere I my art supplies, and I was so excited when I finally found it. While cyanotype isn't exactly shadows, it does require the sun and essentially makes a print of the shadow of the objects laid on top of the paper. This is a print that I had made years ago and is ready for repurposing.

Day 6 - Rock

I had a snow (ice) day today, so I decided it was a good time to do a task that I had been putting off. When I travel to new places, I like to collect some sand to remember it and layer the sand in jars. It is fun to see the layers of different colors. Today I added 6 more layers of sand collected from various sites I visted while traveling to the east coast in September. The most course and rocky of these sands was collect from Lake Ontario, so that is what I will use in my collage.

Day 7 - Speckled

I went back to paint today finding some paint markers to make a quick splatter painting. I stuck to the same color scheme of blue, green, orange, and yellow that came with the spin art for a unified look to the final collage.