Well, hello there, strangers! My sincerest apologies for how quiet it has been on this here blog over the last week (let's be honest: you enjoyed the peace) but I've been super duper busy with my buddies Jennifer, Laura and Ginger getting ready for the Tennessee Camp of Art Scouts!
Laura and Ginger arrived in town on Wednesday afternoon from Ohio. Jen and I had just enough time to show them around our favorite place: Franklin, Tennessee. Franklin is a small town with a big history just 15 minutes south of Nashville. The downtown has a lovely Mayberry-esque vibe. After a stroll up and down Main Street, we took them to a local fave, Pucketts Grocery and Restaurant. The food was delish but the best part of the meal was when we walked in, Jen's husband Miguel and two sweet daughters were there. What a happy surprise! It was so fun to pull up a table and chairs to join them.
On Thursday morning, bright and early and fueled up on coffee, we began to set up Camp for our Scouts. Thankfully, we had the help of our art teacherin' friends Stephanie Preston and Jennifer Staples to get ready for the next couple of days. Those two girls were our right hand gals during Scouts and we just can't thank them enough for all they did for us and the Troops. Thank you, sweet friends! Also, a big shout out to my buddy Mr. Joe for hanging out with a bunch of wild and crazy art teachers for a couple of days.
Ginger had folks working with Amaco's air dry clays because it has a very similar texture as kiln fire clay. Ginger is such a jack of all trades but, unlike me, she's a master of all. When we were brainstorming ideas on what badges our Scouts would earn and what we'd like to share, Ginger is so versatile, she could teach it all! She did such a fab-o job sharing fun clay projects with our Scouts.
Ginger is also our Mural Maven (if you've not seen the time lapsed videos of her students painting murals, go here). The Scouts worked on this scene of the Smoky Mountains that Ginger drew. This helped every understand her simply and impactful method of teaching mural painting to children.
I love how the colors pop on that black paper!
Back in our territory, Jen and I shared everything we could pack in on fibers and printmaking. Jennifer shared such a fun assortment of printmaking projects that are not your usual carve-into-block type of thing. What I love about what Jen shares is that she brings her bright and cheery personality to each project. The sunny sun prints and the colorful wax crayon prints are a true reflection of how colorful the projects are which she shares with her students.
Because Jen has 30 minute art classes with her kindergarten through fourth grade kids, she was able to share how she breaks her projects down into bite sized bits. She also enlightened us to some fast and easy clean up tips!
Marker prints were also thrown into the mix!
And this one being cut out is fabulous. I love that the Scouts swapped flowers to add variety to their collages.
I mean, I wanna paper my walls in these beauties!
Remember: you can circle loom weave on anything round! Hula Hoops! Embroidery Hoops! CDs! Just make sure you have an odd number of warp threads.
To earn their fibers and painting badges, our Scouts created three printing projects and three weaving and one felting masterpieces. We were busy, y'all.
Happy faces, fun projects!
I love this photo collage created by Scout Brandi!
We couldn't have done it without our Ohio friends Ginger and Laura! After our Scouts left Saturday afternoon, we broke down and put our feet up.
To keep up with us, you can follow us on Instagram! You can also join our Facebook group where you'll find a ton of more images and be able to make inquires and chat with attendees.
Here's to more art making fun!
