What the Art Teacher Wore: #65

Who knew The Force was so strong in Germany? Photo snapped outside a Lego store in Nuremberg. sweater: vintage, thrifted; skirt: Free People; scarf: France; boots: The Walking Company; belt: Anthropologie

Ermay, if I promise you that these are the last of my vacay photos will you forgive me? I'm hoping so as I've totally enjoyed sharing my adventures with you. As ya know, we spent lovely four days in Paris which I blabbered about here and here. On the fifth day, we flew into Nuremberg, Germany to attend the wedding party of some friends. We arrived in the morning where hubs promptly went off to work leaving me to spend the day in Nuremberg...

Old Town Nuremberg is the beautiful part of the city that is completely walled in. A lovely place called the Imperial Castle sits at the very top of this walled fortress, overlooking the lay of the land. I traveled to this city over the summer where I was able to get much better photos of the view. You can see them here, if you don't mind all the photos of our school mascot in the mix. I adored this shop window of antique dolls.

The food in Paris was amazing, especially the desserts. Which I greatly missed while in Germany. Don't get me wrong, I do love me some pretzel bread. But this here vegetarian can only eat so many stinkin' pretzels!

That Imperial Castle I mentioned earlier? Well, here 'tis. Not exactly what you were expecting when I said "castle" was it? I think I love this more than my vision of a cold gray stone slab of a building. I think I have a weak spot for timber framed houses. And flowery window boxes. Oh, also those striped shutters!

More Imperial Castle awesomeness.

So after eating, shopping and exploring my way through Nuremberg, I had to get myself to the actual wedding party. By myself. Without a car. With the help of some super friendly Germans, I found the train station, my train and made it safely to Neustadt an der Aisch. Yeah, you ask for directions to that place ten times fast. I huffed it back to our hotel from the train station just in time to get dolled up and head over to the party...where this was taking place.

Yeah, so I'm not German. And I'm not familiar with their traditions. So this one was very fun and unique to me. The deal is, as a guest, you bring old ceramic plates to the wedding party. The bride and groom (pictured above in their traditional dress) wait outside while you wish them well and break dishes at their feet. They then sweep up the dishes and throw them away until not a single shard it left. Keep in mind that there were about 600 folks at this party. This bride and groom were working for at least 2 hours while the rest of us drank and dined.

Me and Mitch (aka hubs).

Because my hubs works for a German musical instrument company (called Meinl, if you're interested), we've traveled there frequently. When we do, we always stay at what's become my favorite hotel, the Allee. It sits right beside a sweet little park with a pond where you can see the ducks swimming and folks out walking their dogs.

The following day hubs and I got up and took a day trip to the town of Bamberg, aka the Venice of Germany. As you drive through the countryside of Germany (which is exactly that, beautiful countrysides), you pass through these amazingly old towns filled with castles and churches older than the country I live in. sweater: DIY, here; top, coat and pants: Anthropologie; scarf: Orla Kiely

Everything was blooming. We strolled the streets and shops of Bamberg even stumbling upon a vintage flea market.

I struck a pose on this very bridge this summer. I had to snap a picture of this tour guide and her rapt Harley audience.

Okay Bamberg, Venice of Germany you may be, but I think I'd much rather find myself in a gondola than a kayak going upstream!

We ended our evening back in Nuremberg to have dinner with some friends. The city was insanely busy because they were celebrating something called Blue Nights...which was basically like a pub crawl illuminated with blue light bulbs. Hey, I'm down with any kind of celebration, don't get me wrong! Just as long as I'm not the one sweeping up a mountain of plates. 

Thanks for enduring the last of my Euro-vacay photos. You deserve a pretzel.

DIY: Vintage 911, Black Velvet Bleed

Yeah, so, I started a blog post series called Vintage 911 way back in 2012. That's also where it ended. Howevers, when I was uprooting my summer duds and closet-swapping them for my winter ones (which took hours as I have entirely too much clothing and vow not to purchase another stinkin' thing for at least 1.5 days), I came upon some vintage dresses that were in desperate need of help. Case in point: this now-lilac-y number.

My fave flowers in the whole wide world are lilacs. When I was a kid growing up in Illinois, there was a huge hedge of them just outside my bedroom window. On summer nights, with the window open, the smell was heavenly. It seems Tennessee is just too hot to host these lovelies. This dress can serve as my little reminder.

But it wasn't always lilac flowers and their sweet scent, ya see. Oh no, this vintage dress began it's life a buttery cream color. I wore it once on a hot summer night and sweated my way through it. I dropped it at the dry cleaners thinking I was leaving it in good hands....only to find this upon my pickup: a black velvet bleed.

What?! I was so bummed when this happened last summer that I promptly stuck it in the back of my closet and tried to forget about it. When I recently uprooted it, I decided to put my new found dying skillz to use. 

Now, normally, I'm all about the Procion dye. I've used it to dip dye a shirt, dresses and even another vintage dress bled. However, I didn't have any lilac dye on hand...and I just didn't think any other color would successfully mask this bloody nightmare.

And so that's when I found myself at the local craft store. I totally bypassed the Rit Dye because I've not had the best success with the stuff. When I noticed this dye packet said "Jacquard", the makers of Procion Dyes, I knew this was the one to go with. Because my dress has an insanely large circle skirt, I picked up two dye packets in case one wouldn't be enough.

Because I'm a lazy rule breaker, I opted not to follow the stove top directions. I wasn't about to spend my Saturday standing over smelly boiling water stirring purple soup. Instead I set my washing machine to the hottest of temps and filled the tub with the dye. Once it started to agitate, I added the damped dress to the mix. Because it's meant to be agitated for something like an hour, I set my alarm for every 12 minutes to reset the agitation. I didn't want my precious dye going down the drain!

I was right to pick up two packets as I ended up dying this dress twice. The first go was a little too light of a lilac for me. It came out looking faded. I'm much happier with the second go round. I'm sure you can see in the before photo that this dress had a white silhouette of foliage throughout. This pattern is now much more subtle and I'm a little bummed that it's kind of disappeared. Other than that, I'm happy with this new lilac-y addition to my closet.

In the Art Room: The Art Show Part 1

It seems that when I fell off the DIY wagon it was because it had crashed into the What I Wore wreck. Now that the art show is behind me (huge sigh of relief), I hope to get back to regular blog posts soon. Thanks for hangin' with me! Now here's what I wore at the Art Show: top: Banana Republic, yard sale; skirt: vintage, etsy; wedges: Target, last season; palette hair clip: DIY

Important In-Bold Message: Thank you parent helpers at JES for hanging each and every piece of artwork for the show. The children, their families and the staff have enjoyed seeing their hard work. There wouldn't be an art show without you! My sincerest of thanks.

Last Thursday night, I was able to put another notch on my belt. My Art Show belt that is. If my weak memory serves me correctly, I do believe this is a monumental notch as this was my 10th art show at my current school (I spent previous 5 years teaching at a school in Nashville).  You can see last year's Art Show here and here. Because I took a mountain of photos, I thought I'd share with you the work of my kindergarten through second grade students first. I've written about most of these projects on this here blog, so look out for the link if you are interested in reading more.

Oh! I almost forgot. If you recall from my last post, I mentioned that my students sculpted dogs and cats from clay as apart of their service project. Well, they managed to raise $430 dollars for Happy Tales Humane! Congrats, Awesome Artists!

Our theme this year was Traveling Europe  (we only managed to hit France, Germany and England). At the beginning of the school year, I had each student create a self portrait in either green, blue or yellow and used them to create this map. Full project details here.

Because we were traveling abroad, the students created both suitcases and passports. If you scroll down, you'll see some examples of the suitcases or check out the lesson here. Because we were flying overseas, each class had a plane drawing contest that the kids voted on. The winning drawing was enlarged by the artist on my Elmo while I snapped photos of the kids pretending to be looking out the window of a plane.

This fourth grade plane is a crack up. I do believe it's coming in for a hard landing as many of the passengers appear to be freaking out. Or sleeping. Or getting sick. Gotta love fourth grade.

A wall of kindergarten art. I always snap photos of the artists to go along with their work. Their photos are not shown in this picture. I did not involve my kindergarten artists in our traveling theme. There are so many art basics to cover, that I like to focus on those during their first year of art. You can read more about those lovely abstract paintings here.

These self-portraits as artists were so fun to make. And we got to recycle our "messy mats" into aprons! More here.

Here's a fun weaving lesson that I'll be sharing with you in the next couple of weeks: Woven Fish!

Here's a glance at a first grade class. These guys were included in our travel theme. They also have to write artist autobiographies which are always entertaining to read. You can see more of the German Gnome Project here.

One of my favorite projects this year was the Hot Air Balloons over Paris. Anytime you can include a photo of the child in a work of art, it's a success. Lesson here.

Both my first and second graders created these Royal Self Portraits. Each one is so expressive and a perfect match of the artist himself.

The one on the left looks very much like a doll from It's a Small World. And the one on the right just cracks me up. Lesson details here.

In my art room, I had the clay projects on display. Sadly, the art room became flooded with folks before I got any photos. Here are some of my first grader's clay animal sculptures as chatted about here.

Second grade goodness. This year, I tried out CD weaving with the kids. I loved the lesson and it seemed to take the kids a less amount of time to complete, which was a bonus. My art teacher friend over at the blog Art Matters does an excellent job demonstrating the steps to creating these weavings.

I love the beautifully printed background of this German Cuckoo Clock. Lesson plan here.

These paintings created near the beginning of the school year seem extra exciting to me since my trip to Paris. Geez, I still can't believe I was there! Does that feeling ever go away? Parisian Landscape Lesson here.

My second graders created their animals by putting two pinch pots together and adding legs. Lesson on this in the near future.

Stay tuned for some incredible work by the third and fourth grade students! And, if you have any questions or thought about the projects you see here, I'd love to hear from you. 

In the Art Room: Cats and Dogs

This sculpture just makes me wanna say, "Aw, who's a good boy?! Are you a good boy? Oh, yes you are!" in my most annoying talking-to-doggies voice.

Hi there. Remember me? I'm that blogger that used to post a weekly DIY. That was before the school-wide art show ate my life. Thankfully, almost everything is hung up and on display and ready for the big day tomorrow. And, since I'm blabbering about the art show (of which I will most definitely snap endless photos and share them here), I'd like to give a super huge cyber hug to all the amazing moms that help out in the art room. Seriously. They've hung 5 pieces of art for each of my 400 students. I don't like math, but I'm no dummy. I know that's a whole lotta artwork.

This is like one of those super cute kitties that the moment you turn your back on them they hiss at you, claw your legs and hack up a hairball in your purse. When you turn back around...all you see is this creepily sweet face. Shivers.

Since my life has been swallowed by art-showy-ness, I thought I'd give you a sneak peak at my fourth graders clay projects. You might remember from this post that my students have created dog and cat sculptures this year. This was apart of our art service project as donations will be collected on the night of the art show for these sculptures and the proceeds will be going to Happy Tales Humane.

Your typical dog and cat: Dog does goofy stuff. Cat looks on in disgust.

In years past, my students have participated in Empty Bowls, a wonderful using-art-to-give-back opportunity. I'm trying to instill in these little art students of mine just how powerful and helpful their work can be.

Someone please play fetch with this sweet little pup.

Now each one of my grade levels did a different version of an animal sculpture and I've gotta admit, I liked these the best. Each of my fourth grade students had such great ideas that it really was exciting to watch and teach. I just taught them the basics and they went from there. If you are interested, here's what I showed 'em:

• To begin, chose a texture for your base. I've got a wide assortment of doilies, burlap and textured surfaces for them to use. Fabric works best for this as it won't stick to the clay. 
• Position your grapefruit-sized piece of clay on your texture. Using the bottom of your fist, pound the clay into the texture until it has a thickness of a cookie.

• Peal your clay from your texture and prepare to be amazed. Move your texture off of your surface and cut out a shape for your base. To save time, I give my students several base shapes to chose from: circles, rounded squares and a floral kind of shape.

• With the excess clay, roll out four legs. I tell the kids these should be as long as their finger but twice as thick. Because my classes are a half an hour long, this is usually where we stop for the day. The clay is wrapped in a damp paper towel and placed inside a ziplock back with the child's name on the front.

• The following art class, the students create a body with a thick piece of clay. The legs are attached by using a little water and some scrubbing with a toothbrush.

• To make the face, I tell the kids to sink both of their thumbs into an oval shaped piece of clay. This becomes the eye sockets.

• The mouth is created with a skewer stick wiggled into the clay horizontally.

• The nose is pulled upward away from the clay.

• Eyes are rolled from two spheres and pupils are given with the back of the skewer stick. Here's my rough and dirty example. I've found that by making my example far from perfect, it removes they "I could never do that!" idea. 
• Now, like I said, that's the basics. What I really wanted to emphasize to the kids is that they are unique artists so their work should reflect that. I wanted them to really explore all sorts of different ideas. So that they could make their ideas come to life, I told them that anything can be created out of clay by using three things: spheres, slabs and coils. I asked them to give me some ideas on what they'd like to make so see if  my theory was true. They told me: frisbee? Sure, a slab. A dog bone? A coil. A sombrero (yes, there's a dog with a sombrero and a mustache)? Let's see, a slab and a sphere. Coil for the 'stache.

I love the windblown ears.

This beagle was created to look just like the artists own. I love the cat on the right. Notice the palette and paint brush in her tiny paws.

The texture on this dog is awesome but my favorite part are the crossed paws.

This student meticulously glazed the rug on which her cat sits...and it's stunning. I love all of the depth and texture in her piece.

Isn't this how every cat sees himself? Royalty. Or a royal pain. You decide.

When it came time for glazing, these kids were so invested in their masterpiece that they spent an entire hour glazing. I love the effect of Mayco's Stroke and Coat. But mostly I just love these creations. I cannot wait to see their parents reaction tomorrow night at the art show. Until I recover from that, enjoy the rest of your week!