Vol. 3, No. 71, March 12, 2018

3071 - Salty Bubbles.

Today at Art Club, I had the students draw with glue and cover it with salt. Next time we will paint it with watercolors. For my example, I drew a cow and surrounded it with a bubble background.

Vol. 3, No. 70, March 11, 2018

3070 - Twisted Toast.

Today I kept it simple and photographed my breakfast of French Toast before eating it.

Vol. 3, No. 69, March 10, 2018

3069 - Set Distortion.

Today we celebrate yet another Set Work Saturday. Okay, yeah, you’re right, it wasn’t so much a celebration as a mandatory good time. Either way, it happened and we were starting painting, so I had to be there. I planned ahead and brought some vases with me and before washing brushes, I quickly took my picture for the day. I think it may be one of my favorites so far.

Vol. 3, No. 68, March 9, 2018

3068 - Propped Props.

This afternoon, I was hanging out in the LCT Prop Room, collecting props for the Youth Theatre show, Dear Edwina Jr. As I worked, I came across some clear vases and decided that I could just do my project here instead of waiting until I got home at 9. After filling the vases, I searched for a fun prop to distort, and found a typewriter.

It took some maneuvering and propping to get good reflections, but I am excited about the finished product. I am pretty sure I forgot to put the typewriter away when I was finished.

Vol. 3, No. 67, March 8, 2018

3067 - Orange Ya Glad.

I replenished my orange stash when I bought Oreos, so when I finally got home at 9 PM and saw them sitting on the counter I decided that they would be my subject for the day. I placed the oranges in a blue ceramic bowl that I had made on the wheel last year. I used the flash for this picture which happened to distort the image even more.

Vol. 3, No. 66, March 7, 2018

3066 - Icy Distortion.

Today is National Cereal Day and I planned on photographing a bowl of my favorite cereal. However, as I was walking in the door after school, I noticed the wall of icicles above my head. Melting in the bright sun, the icicles were to beautiful not to photograph. Thanks to the burst function on my phone I was able to capture a picture of a water droplet as it was about to fall from the icicle. If you look closely you can see a distorted view of my garage.

Vol. 3, No. 65, March 6, 2018

3065 - Dissected Oreos.

Today we celebrate National Oreo Cookie Day. I made a special trip to the store to buy a package of Oreos and then used them in my distorted photography project.

Vol. 3, No. 64, March 5, 2018

3064 - Discord.

Today I continued my distorted photography project, choosing a ukulele as my subject.

Vol. 3, No. 63, March 4, 2018

3063 - Distorted.

While perusing Pinterest a while ago, I saw a pin where they photographed objects through vases of water. I immediately loved the idea. Conviently my sister had a collection of clear cylinder vases from her wedding. Since she was coming home this weekend, I asked her to bring me some vases. So this week, who knows maybe I’ll extend it, my theme will be distortion photography.

I wanted to photograph oranges today as on this day in 1792, oranges were first introduced to Hawaii. However, when I went to grab my oranges, I found the bag to be empty. So I searched for something else, finding my flowered clutch from my sister’s wedding.

As the days go on, I will have to play with vase arrangements and lighting, but this is a good start.

Vol. 3, No. 62, March 3, 2018

3062 - Diaper Duty.

Today I attended a baby shower for my cousin and we decorated diapers that can be used to make late night diaper changes more fun. Yeah I don’t understand the concept, but I decorated one anyways. The fact that there were Neon Sharpies made it more fun. I kept it simple and drew a little flower.

Vol. 3, No. 61, March 2, 2018

3061 - Clay Week.

I have always hated doing clay projects with my elementary students. Clay is sort of a touchy material to work with; if you don’t attach pieces correctly, they can fall off; too thick, it can explode; too dry, it can crack. All of these factors make it clay with kids a challenge. I was thankful that I was able to keep clay to one week this year. This made for a very busy, slightly stressful week, but I made it through. Today was the final clay day and I made sure to take a couple minutes to make a project for myself. My Grade 4 students were making coil candy dishes in an interesting shape. I decided to turn my candy dish into a doughnut. It’s definitely not the most creative dish that was made this week, but I was rushed for time; even more so than my students who only got about 25 minutes to actually build with clay.

With all 290 some projects labeled and drying, I left for the weekend. Leaving abruptly (to get to my next school) means that on Monday I have a clay-dust covered classroom to clean-up.

Vol. 3, No. 60, March 1, 2018

3060 - Remember.

Without a theme, I struggled to come up with a project and time to make it. In school I made a couple of talking rocks with my third graders, but in the rush of going from one school to the next, I forgot to take pictures of them. At the next school, I made flower drawings, but how many times can I use essentially the same project? So I got to play practice and was searching Pinterest for an easy project that didn’t require any special materials. With the help of CC, I decided on an origami elephant. I kept it simple choosing an easier model and using a discarded sheet of notebook paper.

Vol. 3, No. 59, February 28, 2018

3059 - Happy Heart.

I am so excited that I am finally at the end of my month of hearts. I have decided that using the same theme for an entire month is too much for me. So from now on, my themes are only going to last a week.

To celebrate the end of Heart Month, I decided the enjoy the 40 degree weather and head out side to play in the snow. I walked a path drawing a human heart. Turns out it’s hard to make large drawings on the ground super accurate. It was also unfortunate that there was a shadow across the heart, but I knew if I waited for it to move, I'd loose the light.

Vol. 3, No. 58, February 27, 2018

3058 - Almost Finished.

In line with Keeping It Simple, I created hearts from the flowers that I was drawing with my 3rd and 4th graders today. I drew 4 flowers with each class. The ninth picture is of some patterned circles that I drew at the beginning of the school year and I decided it was time to erase from my board. I drew the design, then traced a heart on top and erased everything outside of the heart.

Vol. 3, No. 57, February 26, 2018

3057 - Fan Fun.

Today art Art Club, I had my students trace a high contrast black and white picture with Sharpie on a coffee filter and then paint it with watercolors. It could have been a lesson on positive and negative space, but we really just did it for fun. As cool as these look, I think my students had more fun holding their completed art to the fan for drying than they did actually creating the art. To stick with my heart theme, I decided to draw an actual heart for my artwork today.

Vol. 3, No. 56, February 25, 2018

3056 - Experience.

Today I got to experience the Crayola Experience with the Miller Littles. This meant about 4 hours of drawing, painting, sculpting, and chasing kids around. It was tons of fun an I came home with tons of art. I couldn't decide on just one picture to post, so I created a collage. As I created art today, I made a point to include hearts in my artworks. I think that my favorite station was the Melted Crayon Painting. The collage shows a dancing bat, digitized fashion, molded and labeled crayons, photo coloring page, melted wax painting, fairy coloring, Melted Wax Spin Art, painted "foam" finger,  and a puzzle.

Vol. 3, No. 55, February 24, 2018

3055 - Battle Hearts.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon playing Battleship with my sister. She won every time. I took a break between games to create a heart with the pegs. The design didn't quite fit on the grid.

Vol. 3, No. 54, February 23, 2018

3054 - I Tried.

I still had painted paper scraps sitting in my recycle bin at school so I decided to try a new craft with them, woven heart baskets. I had seen the idea multiple time, but I have never made one, I guess technically, I still haven’t. After much time spent getting the paper the right proportion and shape, I began to weave. I took me a couple tries to figure out a good order to begin weaving. I finally got a hang on the technique and was on my second to last strip, when it ripped out. I figured I could still make it work. Then as I shifted the woven strips down to make room for the final strip, the whole bottom ripped out, thus destroying the basket. I am pretty sure that a large part of my problem was that with the paper being covered in a heavy layer of paint, it was too thick to bend in the necessary way to be woven.

So in the end, the project was destroyed and went back to the recycle bin. But hey, at least I tried!

Vol. 3, No. 53, February 22, 2018

3053 - Julia Did It.

As I completed 2 more classes worth of seahorse collages and saw my recycle bin overflowing with paper scraps, I decided to do my own recycling. I salvaged a pile of scraps to bring home. Then I used my heart paper punch to cut out a bunch of paper hearts. Then with the help of my friend Julia, we folded the hearts in half and glued them together to make little heart shaped flowers. I added a stem to each and popped them in a vase.

Vol. 3, No. 52, February 21, 2018

3052 - Horse Hearts.

This week I am working with my Kindergarten, first and second grades to assemble their painted paper collages. This is a follow along activity, which means that for every class, I am also making a picture. Today after school, I lined up yesterday’s completed projects (two classes worth) in the shape of a heart. It was fun to see all of them together; just imagine what it would look like with all 14 classes.