DIY: Latch Hook and Needlepoint Andy Warhol!

I just finished off my latest latch hook artist series: Andy Warhol! If you recall, I've already done Frida's portrait. I decided to create Andy next and make the pattern available to you! You can find it, along with the Frida pattern, right here. 

 I have not done a needlepoint version of Andy yet...I just got so excited about working on my next pattern that I moved on. I'm hoping to create a needle point version soon. For now, I'm just stuck with a Shaggy Andy. 

My goal is to create a series of these artists...making one big ole latch hook artist rug. Crazy? Yeah...but what else would you expect? 

If you've never latch hooked before, the supplies are available at most craft stores. You can find out details about the process here. 

To give you an idea of what the needlepoint version would look like, just check out the back of my latch hook! Of course this is the design in reverse...but it kinda gives you an idea. I love the back of latch hook just as much as the front...I might have to hang these so they can be seen from the front and the back!

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In the Art Room: Andy Warhol Inspired Flower Prints

Today my second grade friends started a new printmaking project that I thought I'd share with y'all. In our 30 minute session together, they were able to watch the first half of the video, discover a little about Andy Warhol, learn some new vocabulary, work with printmaking tools and complete about two sets of prints (one positive and one negative). Whew! Next time, we'll print again to insure that we have enough crisp prints to pick from to create our own Andy Warhol Flower-inspired collage. Lemme show you how we are creating these pop art beauties:

Here's what you'll need:

* Colorful copy paper. I found mine super cheap in the Back to School section of Walmart a while back.

* Fake flowers. I tried real sunflowers in my experimenting and found that the petals kept falling out onto the printing plate. Fake flowers from the Dollar Tree were my best find. 

* Acrylic paint. I tried using tempra and it didn't work on the Gelli Arts printing plate. 

* Brayers

* Printing plate. I used Gelli Arts but you could also use this recipe to create your own gelatin plates. 

* Scissors and glue

* Those two little words that get everyone excited: PUFFY.PAINT.

After the kids have created their prints, we'll proceed on to the collage and puffy painting portion of the video. I'll keep you posted in a follow up on just how these colorful beauties turn out. 

In other news, I kinda sorta totally wanna wallpaper my entire house in these. Who's up for a flower printing weekend?! Party at my house, you bring the flowers, I'll bring the brayers. I'm telling you, this project is so fun, just ask Andy...

I mean, doesn't he look thrilled?! Ha! Love that wonderful Warhol, y'all. 

This lesson is going to be followed up by a flower painting project by our next artist inspo: Vincent van Gogh. I thought printing the sunflowers would give the kids a good opportunity to see them up close, check out those textures and better prepare them to recreate them in paint. I'll keep you posted. 

Until then, have a super happy and colorful week, kids! 

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DIY: A Warhol's Flowers Printed Dress

You know, being the uber professional and not-at-all shallow person that I am, when I was initially asked to teach a workshop at a local -n- lovely botanical gardens my first thought was, "OMGah! WHAT AM I GONNA WEAR?!" 

Not the lessons I was gonna teach or the examples I was gonna share. Nah. Because, you see, I'm about at deep as a nearly-drained kiddie pool. I ain't braggin, y'all. Just statin' facts, ma'am. And that one lone sir who accidentally found himself on this blog and is wondering, "how in the world do I get outta here?!".  Oh, hubs, if I've told you once, I've told ya a million times, hit the back button and return to the land of the non-crazy. Sigh.

In all (non)seriousness, when I was approached by Karen Kwarciak, Manager of School and Outreach Progams at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art (holy cow, that was a mouthful), she mentioned that the workshop was on the very last day of the Andy Warhol's Flowers exhibit. Being that the exhibit was super fabulous, Karen and I thought it would be fun to base the workshop around Warhol's Flowers.

I mean, riiiiiight?! Super fabulous. Unfortunately, this piece is no longer available as it's hanging above my couch. Thanks for the discount, Cheekwood! Wait...what do you mean you want it back?! And, really, was it necessary to call the cops? I mean, suriously.

Since museums tend to get all huffy about folks "borrowing" their masterpieces, I thought we'd create our own Warhol-inspired pieces at the workshop! AND, being that I needed something to wear, I decided to print mine on fabric and use 'em to embellish a dress. I was super stoked with how these turned out so I thought I'd share the super simple process with you!

For this, you'll need the following supplies:

* A Gelli-Plate. If you don't have these as they do cost a small fortune, no worries! You can make your own version of a Gelli-Plate outta gelatin found at the grocery. I wrote a blog post about it a while back...go here for directions and it will yield the same results (I just wanted to say "yield the same results" because I thought I might fool you into thinking me intelligent. Did it work?)

* Fabric Paint. Only necessary if you plan to wash the fabric. Otherwise, acrylic would probably work.

* Brayer.

* Thin Cotton Fabric. I noticed that the thinner the fabric, the better. Or paper.

* Flowers. I used these daisies (that's what those are, right? I have two black thumbs so I've no clue).

For the first print, which will be the negative image, ink up your printing surface and lay a flower down face down. Place your fabric (or paper!) and massage the surface. Lift off your paper/fabric and VIOLA!

Groovy, right? But wait, there's more!

Now, remove the flower, apply a fresh sheet of fabric/paper, massage and BOOM!

Can I get an applause? Thank you, thank you vury much.

After pulling over a dozen of these prints, I decided I was ready to add it to a dress. So I skipped down to the local clothing-resale shop and found this super short-shorty for a mere $6. I thought the colors were perfectly suited for me prints.

I was so excited to begin, I only snapped a coupla photos. I did appliqué stitch the flowers to the neckline...

As well as quilt and attach these prints to the hemline.

For a quickie DIY, I thought the results were pretty fun. AND NOW I had something to wear for the workshop. Otherwise, I woulda just had to call in sick. 

So just what was the workshop all about, you ask? Okay, so you didn't ask but whateves, Ima bout to tell you. We began with a fantastic guided tour through the Warhol exhibit. Once finished, I introduced that aforementioned gelatin printing. If you've not tried this yet, it's one of those everyone's-successful/inspired/challenged type projects that we all love. This got a lotta oooohs and ahhhhhs. The process works exactly the same as that I showed ya on the Gelli Plate: negative print first...

Remove the leaves, print again and positive prints second. Not only did the participants play around with the gelatin plates but they also tried their hand at printing on the Gelli-Plates. They created prints both on paper and on fabric. I loved their results.

And, being the awesome art teachers that they are, they totally came up with their own ideas! For example, several experimented with using the flowers as a stamp.

For the image on the left, the artist stamped onto their negative print paper with a flower. It turned out the flowers held the paint for a pinch thus making this possible. I do believe that same idea was used on the right.

I thought the flowers looked pretty amazing after this process! So Warhol-esque!

These images were created on fabric. The one on the left was created with that stamping technique. I also had puffy paint available for those that wanted to play around with outline or design ideas.

That morning, I also introduced a leaf relief project that is another one of my faves. If you follow this link, you can read all about this simple yet super-amazing looking process.

After a super delish lunch and some down time, we jumped right back in for more crafting. This time, I introduced a stenciled embroidery project that I can't wait to try out with my students. I also showed 'em my fave craft in the whole wide world -- needle felting!

I tried to keep the afternoon projects super open-ended. I thought this would be better for the teachers to visualize what might work best in their art room with their resources and curriculum. I loved the variety of felted fun they had! I think felting was their fave.

Here's an example of an artist using her stenciled piece with needle felting. The fabric paint dries quickly so no one had to wait before attacking with the felting tool.

Y'all know I loved this piece!

And so, there you go! A Warhol-inspired dress for a workshop full of artsy mess! Special thanks to Cheekwood and Karen for hosting the fun. Chat soon, y'all!

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In the Art Room: The Andy Warhol Mural

So you've seen it as a backdrop to some crazy DIY Campbell's dress, now it's time to shine some light on this 4th grade mural. In case you don't know the back story, I'll give it to you in 20 words or less: parent wanted posters for upcoming canned food drive; I wanted a mural for the cafeteria; student teacher Rebecca suggested this. Because she's a genius.

Because the kids were in the middle of creating their dots for this project, I decided to ease them into all things Warhol with a coupla of my fave books: Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists by Mike Venezia and Dropping in on Andy Warhol by Pamela Geiger Stephens and Jim McNeill. As the kids finished off their dots, they trickled to the floor as I read. By the way, one little trick I use to reinforce the names of artists is this: as I read, I'll only read the artist's first name and the kids are to say the last name. I've found this really helps them retain the names of artists...although I have had this happen on more than one occasion:

Me: Vincent...

Kids: DA VINCI!

So, it's not a perfect formula.

 Speaking of Vincent da Vinci, er, van Gogh, here's a Starry Night mural created by this same group of kids way back when they were in second grade town. So they are experts at this grid-thang.

Because this project was all Rebecca's idea, she did the planning. She found this image online and created a grid that would provide at least one image per student. We have between 24 - 25 students per 4th grade class so some early finishers were given another piece of the pie, er, can to draw. Rebecca made several copies of this can and colored each of those copies in a different Warhol-inspired color scheme.

This is actually one of the color schemes that didn't make the cut but I thought I'd share it with you to give you an idea. After each of the 4 copies were colored, Rebecca then cut them along the gridded lines.

And here's how they looked chopped to bits. Each 1" X 1 1/2" (and that's a rough measurement) was given a code on the back to help keep when gluing down the pieces. Each student was given a piece of paper that measured about (and I'll have to get back to you after a visit to school tomorrow for a more accurate measurement) 10" X 12".

Each of the 4 class' different cans cut, organized and clipped. Which would be all Rebecca's doing as I'm not nearly as organized as that gal.

Directions went a lil something like this: 

• Name and code (as seen on the back of the small paper) on the back of drawing paper
• As you start your drawing, look at the 4 edges of the little square. Where you see the beginnings of a line, like the curve of a can or the start of a letter, put a little tick mark on your drawing paper. Think about the scale of the drawing and how you will have to enlarge your drawing to make it to scale.
• Use a pencil, trace with sharpie, color with corresponding colors in oil pastel.

I'm not gonna lie, the lettering, especially the cursive font of the "Campbell's" wasn't a walk in the park. For those kids, another demo was given, this time more of a one-on-one or with some peer-tutoring thrown in the mix, and it worked. The kids really seemed to enjoy the process and they loved the result. As they finished their pieces, Rebecca spray glued them to a large sheet of bulletin board paper which you can see the pink coloring of in the photo below.

Okay, despite the fact that there's a glue bottle on the ladder, I promise you no Elmer's was used in the hanging of this piece. We had a couple of drawings where the edges were coming off the bulletin board paper and that glue was our solution. We had a wee bit of tack strip at the top to hang the piece from...but that didn't solve the dilemma of the fly-away-bottom (which sounds like a personal problem, if you ask me...symptoms of fly-away-bottom include a bottom that just won't stay attached, use Elmer's Glue only as directed). So, we resorted to the Hotter than Hades glue gun (seriously, I watched it burn a hole clear through my fingernail and It. Was. Awesome) which, at my school, is a Big Fat Hairy No-No. But my principal's away on maternity leave, and, as the saying goes, when the principal's away, the art teachers are gonna hot glue the crap outta the school. Or something like that.

I can't believe that in just two weeks, this girl is gonna leave me! I mean, how could she?! What am I supposed to do, teach or something? That's just crazy.

A coupla more close-ups. In retrospect, a chat about David Hockney's photo collages would have been a great tie-in with these cans.

Since Rebecca had to go and teach, she left hanging the last coupla cans in my hands. No problem, says me, I got this!

And with one tug on the extension cord, I managed to make this magic happen. Sigh. Seriously?! I really don't think this girl outta leave me, do you?

In all seriousness, I hope you'll give a big ole mural a-go at your school. The impact is amazing and the kids love it. If I've failed to answer any of your questions, please feel free to either email me or leave a comment...and I'll try my best to answer your questions. And thanks for dropping by!

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