Vol. 6, No. 7, February 21, 2026

Week 7

Day 43 - Edible

With juice from pickled beets, pea flower tea, and lemon juice, I made an array of edible paints. It was fun to mix the paints and watch them dry on the paper. I never really knew what the finally color would be.

Day 44 - Shadow

After a quick search online for 'shadow art' I decided to try this one. They did a snowman on a blue background which was cuter, but my trees on a scrap of green paper served my needs.

Day 45 - Heart Shaped

A piece of junk mail had a beautiful heart on it. Why work harder when you can use your resources?

Day 46 - Green

With green acrylics and a sparkly green crayon on green paper, a created a scraped paint painting.

Day 47 - Soft

I pulled out the soft pastels and created a stencil using a heart corner punch. I then stenciled directly onto the background paper for my collage. I forgot to take a picture of the finished artwork before I made the collage, so here is a picture of the stencil instead.

Day 48 - Broken

I thought of ways of adding something broken to my artwork, but I didn't have any good options readily available. That's when I found a piece of plastic and thought I would draw cracks over it to look like a broken screen. Ultimately I decided to put the cracked design on a piece of shipping tape so that I wouldn't have to do any gluing. The texture under the crack is from the silicone mat i put the tape on while I drew.

Day 49 - Stick

I burned the end of a stick and drew stick people.

Vol. 6, No. 4, January 31, 2026

Week 4

Day 22 - Pattern

Today, I emptied some marker boxes. I decided to recycle one and draw Zentangle patterns on it. For inspiration, I looked at the handout I will be giving to my 5th grade students to use for their project.

Day 23 - Pretty

Today, I was cleaning out some paint pallets and I decided to to put the leftover paint to use. I went crazy, painting abstract designs, not even bothering to wash my brush. One stroke looked like a flower, and soon a small garden of pretty flowers had appeared.

Day 24 - Rough

One fun thing about acrylic paint is that is thick and can add a lot of rough texture to a painting. This is a corner of my "pretty" painting, that I layered clumps of mostly dried paint.

Day 25 - Lots

The 2nd graders are learning about Yayoi Kusama. She puts lots of dots in her art. I drew this mushroom by making lots of small dots with a ultra fine point sharpie.

Day 26 - Strong

Mushrooms seemed like a fun theme to continue. This mushroom was painted using very strong coffee. 

Day 27 - Hanging 

Using a scrap of newspaper that had been used as a messy mat, I created a paper chain of miniature flowers that I could hang.

Day 28 - Brittle

More mushrooms. These mushrooms were drawn of a dry, brittle leaf with a glue pen and sprinkled with glitter. The leaf was so brittle that it was breaking under the pressure of the pen.

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.