Vol. 2, No. 281, October 8, 2017

2281 - Behind the Mirror.

DAY 8 For your materials today use only what you can find in a medicine cabinet or cupboard in your bathroom.

I looked in my parent's medicine cabinet and found a large bottle of fish oil capsules, they seemed like the perfect material. The next step was to figure out a subject. I  turned to  the internet and discovered that today is National Octopus Day. So on the bathroom counter, I made a fish oil octopus.

Vol. 2, No. 280, October 7, 2017

2280 - Sincerest Form of Flattery.

DAY 7 Recreate a famous work of art using material and technique of your choice.

When I get a prompt like this one, I usually choose Van Gogh's "Starry Night". However, today was another Set Work Saturday, which sort of changed my plans. I began my day wearing a brand new black apron. When I was finished, my apron was splattered with paint, resembling a Jackson Pollock painting. It is hard to believe that I got my apron so dirt so quickly., bu I love that it isn't empty any more. The picture's not great, because when I took it, I wasn't intending to use it as my project.

Vol. 2, No. 279, October 6, 2017

2279 - Mad as Adam.

DAY 6 Use palindromes as your inspiration today.

I kept it simple today, choosing a palindrome and illustrating it. Mr. Owl ate my metal worm. It looks kind of like my worm has a mustache, but that is the worm.

Vol. 2, No. 278, October 5, 2017

2278 - World Teacher's Day.

DAY 5 It's #WorldTeachersDay ! Make an homage to an important teacher in your life.

I have lots of important teachers in my life, but I sort of decided to focus on myself. My Grade 3 students are currently learning about Ancient Greek Vases and they are making their own using wax-resist painting.  Each vase tells a story. I hadn't made an example yet, so I decided that today would be the perfect time. My story tells of a teacher teaching students about patterns. Regardless of what they teach, teachers play an important role in the lives of our youth. So while the classroom in the picture is very similar to mine and the teacher looks very similar to me, but really it could be anyone.

Vol. 2, No. 277, October 4, 2017

2277 - Plastic Fantastic.

DAY 4 Create something using disposable plastic bags as your primary material.

This summer at the Minnesota State Fair, I saw a rug made from plastic bags. I thought it was really cool and put it on my "create" list. When this prompt came up I decide now was the perfect time to attempt the rug. I didn't anticipate the project taking as long as it did, but it did have lots of steps, two long braids, and sewing the swirl. Unfortunately, whenever I make braided rugs, they always seem to bow. Thus instead of a nice plastic rug, I got a nice plastic bowl. It still looks nice, it's just not the shape I was going for. I decided to include the bowl from different angels so you can get a better idea of what it looks like. In some of the pictures I took, it actually looks flat.

Vol. 2, No. 276, October 3, 2017

2276 - Odd Bedfellows.

DAY 3 Combine 2 things that you would not typically put together.

I struggled with what to use, and then as I was eating my Happy Meal at supper: Apple's and Ketchup. I arranged apples into a butterfly and then used ketchup to decorate the wings and add antennas. Yes, I still ate the apples, ketchup and all.

Vol. 2, No. 275, October 2, 2017

2275 - Name Game.

DAY 2 Make something representing the origins or meanings of your name.

I love when the Creative Sprint prompts match up with other projects in my life. Rosanne means 'gracious rose' so I decided to make a rose. Convienently, my 4th graders are currently working on contour line drawings of flowers and seashells. They get to draw their lines with glue and then paint over the top with watercolor using their choice of a warm or cool color scheme. Since roses are red, I chose warm colors for my painting. My sharpie outlines aren't perfect, but I am still happy with how it turned out.

Vol. 2, No. 274, October 1, 2017

2274 - Small Sprint.

Today marks the beginning of the 

I am excited to get into it and to receive prompts everyday. While this makes planning ahead more difficult, it saves me the hassle of trying to figure out what to make everyday. Today's prompt was the same as the first day of all other Creative Sprints:

DAY 1 Make something that fits in the palm of your hand using only the materials in your immediate environment.

I was going to incorporate National Hair Day into my project and make a small paint brush using my hair, but then as I sat in church I looked at my finger nail and noticed that the chipped polish was in the shape of an elephant. So when I got home I used a Sharpie to draw in the details thus the completion of my first project. Maybe I'll revisit the hair later in the challenge.

Do you want to get in on the Creative Sprint? You can! Just sign up here to have the daily prompts emailed to you each morning. Don't want emails? Follow #CREATIVESPRINT on Instagram or join the FACEBOOK GROUP.

Vol. 2, No. 273, September 30, 2017

2273 - Chuck E. Cheese.

I went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time today. The Miller's and I were celebrating Littlest Miller's Birthday. Littlest Miller got 2 pictures while we were there, so when we got home, we used the boxes from some snacks we bought to make a double picture frame. We decked it out with some scrapbooking paper. Littlest Miller colored the Little green "roses" that decorated the frame. The star was one of the prizes that she bought with her tickets.

Vol. 2, No. 272, September 29, 2017

2272 - Happily Adjourning Thy Debts.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year; it is National Coffee Day and the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. I love coffee and one of my favorite prayers is the Prayer to St. Michael.

In honor of these days, I have created a painting of my favorite coffee mug with angel wings in the foam. The mountain is just a fun shape to fill the middle. I have decided that this painting is the completion of my gold phase, at least for now.

Vol. 2, No. 271, September 28, 2017

2271 - Bright Baker.

Today we celebrate the first ever National Bakery Day. I didn't have time to get to a local bakery because I was busy at school teaching lots of different lessons. One lesson was on Positive and Negative Space. I decided to use gold papers to make cake using the style of the lesson. Since it is a celebration and I needed more details to fill the space, I added candles.

Vol. 2, No. 270, September 27, 2017

2270 - Monogram.

I was going to use P as the letter of the day and make a person in profile out of a P. I got this idea because I've been drawing lots of people in profile as part of the 3rd grade art lesson on Greek Vases.  After I got it drawn out, I didn't like the way it looked. As I pondered what to do next, I sketched out a P and added some patterns in it. I loved it! Staring at it a little more, I noticed how easy it would be to attach a J to the P. Since to day is Ancestor Appreciation Day, I decided to make my dad's initals, PJH. It turned out to be a fun little project.

Vol. 2, No. 269, September 26, 2017

2269 - Starry Nails.

This weekend I got a pedicure, choosing a sparkly blue polish. I wanted to jazz it up a little, so today I added some green, purple and white to give my big toes a galaxy feel. It didn't quite turn out the way I envisioned in my head, but I still like it.

Vol. 2, No. 268, September 25, 2017

2268 -  Extra Work.

As an art teacher, I often get asked to do different 'artsy' jobs for classroom teachers. On Friday, I recieved and email asking if I could make a guitar pattern about 8.5 x 11". Okay that doesn't seem to difficult, so I agreed. Then as I sat down to work on it this morning, I realized that I didn't really know what they wanted. Did they want a coloring page or a stencil? So I sent an email asking for clarification. As I waited, I sketched out a guitar coloring page.

It turned out that they wanted a stencil, but they only needed the bottom of the guitar, not the handle. Well this just got a lot easier. I went and found 2 different styles of guitars online. I enlarged them so that the bottom filled a sheet of paper, and then I printed them. I used this print out to cut  2 stencils from cardboard. What I'm not sure is why the teachers couldn't do this themselves.

Oh well, its' done now. After all of that creative energy was expeled, I didn't want to do anything else, so I decided to use my guitar sketch as my project.

Vol. 2, No. 267, September 24, 2017

2267 - Punctuation Matters.

"A period, a comma, a semicolon, a question mark and an exclamation point are examples of some of the punctuation used in writing to separate sentences and their elements and to clarify meaning."

It drives me crazy when I am talking to someone via text and they don't use punctuation. Is that a question or a statement? Lack of punctuation can completely change the meaning of a sentence, which is why I chose to celebrate National Punctuation Day. To celebrate, I used a piece of gold foil tissue paper to make a paper cut exclamation point.

Vol. 2, No. 266, September 23, 2017

2266 - Golden Gifts.

Today was bridal shower #2 for my sister. One of the things I needed to do was wrap the gift. I stuffed the pail with gold tissue paper and then made some gold flowers for the top. It was a rush job, but still pretty cute. The sad part was that the flowers blew away before we got to the party. The picture shows a close-up of the flowers in the bottom corners.

Vol. 2, No. 265, September 22, 2017

2265 - Elephant.

There were many options of things to celebrate today. I settled on National Elephant Appreciation Day. I mostly chose this because there was some word art that I came across a while back that I've been wanting to make. It used the letters in Elephant to make an elephant. Still in my gold phase, I used gold paint to scrawl out the letters. It is so cute Imay use the design to make cards.

Vol. 2, No. 264, September 21, 2017

2264 - Jay Day.

Today's project is brought to you by the letter J. At school, the kindergarten classes are learning about one letter everyday and then they make a poster showing things that start with that letter. I don't know which letter they were actually on, but I believe they should be close to J. I was going to use a letter stencil to make my drawing today and I liked the curve of the K, so I went with it even if I am a few days off from the kindergartners.

I was so happy that 8 I'd fit perfectly, creating a nice circle. I then went in and started adding patterns to each J, followed by the between spaces. I could have continued adding patterns, but it was late so I called it finished. Maybe some time I will take a month where all of my daily projects are continuations of previous work.

To make this drawing, I used 2 gold colored pencils. They were both the same brand and both labeled as Gold and yet they were different. One darker and more gray, the other more brighter. Turns out it was nice that they were different because it added more depth and character to the drawing.

Vol. 2, No. 263, September 20, 2017

2263 - What Lifts You.

I was extreamly excited when I completed my first set of wings. All of my students in all three schools are creating a feather that will be combined to create a wing mural inspired by the work of Kelsey Montague. I finished the 3rd and 4th grade mural in Annandale. It was a time consuming process and I am not in love with how it turned out, but the kids and staff love it; I have been getting tons of complements. In the coming weeks, I will be creating at least 2 more, possibly up to 3 more, sets of wings. Now that I have one under my belt, I have a better idea of what to do, so the next ones should be easier.

If you were wondering about the assembly process, I taped black roll paper to the wall with LOTS of masking tape. Then I used hot glue to attach colored "base" paper and the feather. I used a low temp glue gun, so I never got burned, but I still got a blister from pulling the trigger.

The top picture just shows the wings on the wall. The bottom picture shows what it could look like with someone standing in front of it. Thanks to my Bitmoji for posing for the picture!

Vol. 2, No. 262, September 19, 2017

2262 - Growing Up.

This week, I get to celebrate birthdays with two of my littles. Today CAT turns 14 and on Friday, Little Miller turns 5. I made CAT a card using pictures of letters that I have made throughout the month. It's simple card, but it was made with lots of thought and love. I also made the envelope. I only took a picture of the front, because the back wasn't quite right. So, the fourth picture is one that I took of CAT playing volleyball this afternoon.

Happy Birthday CAT!