DIY: A Clay Faux-saic for the Kiln-less

 You know, there are many perks to being an art teacher. Let us count the ways, shall we? 

1. You never have to clean your room. When my art room is looking totes disastrous (which would be any day that ends in "y", ya'll, let's be honest) and a classroom teacher happens to pop in my room, I'll catch her doin' a horrified glance at my dingy tables and crusty countertops (as she slow-gulps and thinks "oh gawd, how can I get outta here before whatever is on her hands gets on my sweater set?!"), I always do the same ole "My room is such a mess today [notice I said "today" as if it's not a daily thing], I should really clean!" song and dance.  It's then that the scarred-for-life classroom teacher says the most magical words in all of art teacher land : It's an Art Room! It's supposed to look this way [spoken whilst looking for the nearest exit].

2. You got a free pass to Freak-a-Zoid. Not only do you never have to clean your room when you're an art teacher but you totes have a free pass to let that freak flag fly. Shoot, if you're doin' right, you're way beyond freak flag and have entered full-tilt bat-sh$$ crazy. Crayon shoes? Check. Sushi headband? Checkity-check. Light up dress? You mean there are other types of dresses?! Triple-check. Your freak flag just spontaneously combusted. 

3. Your professional development hours don't include Common Snore, er, Core. Naw, man! You're the art teacher! Which means you get to spend the day hangin' with other like-minded, messy-art-room, freak-flag-flying chums who get you AND, added bonus, you make stuff. Which is exactly what I spent my Saturday doin', ya'll. Makin' this here Clay Faux-saic for the Kiln-less.

It was so super easy I bet even a class room teacher could do it (you know I'm just kidding, class room teachers! This is way over your sweater-set-wearin' heads,). For this easy breezy project, you'll need to russell up the following:

* A picture frame with plexiglass or glass

* Air dry clay (we used Polyform Model Air available at your local big box craft joint)

* Glue (I like Aleene's Tacky Glue because I imagine a lady named Aleene to have a big fat beehive hairdo and tacky handmade jewelry crafted from beer bottle caps. An art teacher, of course.)

* Acrylic paint. The cheaper the better.

Now, I gotta tell you, I totally deviated from the instructor's directions. Not because she wasn't an excellent teacher and artist (her stuff is amazing, ya'll, check it here) but because I have this terrible habit when it comes to art teacher professional development classes: I have Creativity Constipation. Please tell me I'm not the only one. Some call it "slow processor"; my grandma ustah say, "Cassandra, either sh&& or get off the pot!" Normally, when I finally do come up with an idea, it's unattainably elaborate. Knowing this, I decided to keep my mosaic super simple: A Keith Haring-themed Celebration of a Messy Art Room.

 To which the instructor said at this stage of development: Oh! An Olympic theme! I love the torch, nice touch. 

(face. palm.)

 But lemme back up for a second as I believe I was supposed to be giving you some DIY directions in here. I started by pounding the daylights outta that clay until it was about cookie thickness. From there, I used a needle tool to trace around my Keith Haring-inspired dancing artist figure template. Once one was traced and the edges where smoothed, I flipped my template over and traced a second dude. With my left over bits of clay, I created the filler that you see: pencils, paint blobs, scissors, hearts, moons and rando organic shapes. By the way, that air dry stuff is not my fave. It kinda felt like I was sculpting with an uncooperative stale marshmallow. But that's par for the air-dry-clay course, I have found.

 I laid out all of my pieces directly onto the plexiglass and commenced painting.

 As soon as I was finished painting a piece, I laid it right back into it's spot. I knew that if I didn't, I'd totally forget where it went. By the way, it wasn't until I was about this far that I realized that all of my background pieces looked like Lucky Charms. They're magically delish, ya'll.

 Yay, not an Olympic Torch. 

Once the paint dried, I picked up each piece and glued it to the plexiglass frame. When that was complete, I decided that I didn't like that white "grout" background. I toyed around with a couple of color ideas for the back but in the end settled on black as it made my Lucky Charms "pop". And who wouldn't want that? So I painted a piece of paper black and inserted that into the frame.

And there you have it. I can't wait to hang this bad boy in my Disastrous "But it's an Art Room!" I think it'll go perfectly in-between those dingy tables and that crusty sink. Until next time, ya'll, fly that flag high! And, please, save that classroom teacher a heart attack and go wash your paint-stained hands. 

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What the Art Teacher Wore #101 and Some Happenins

Memorial Day Monday: My first official day of summer. I'm so glad it's here...although every time I look at my calendar, I wonder "where is all my free time?!" it seems I've done a fine job of overbooking myself, sigh. dress: Anthropologie, last year; belt: made by me; anchor sandals: Sperry

Well, howdy, strangers! I wasn't really intending on taking that mini-hiatus but it seems that I've been consumed by summer vacay. Ya see, the hubs and I are currently in California (him: work; me: what's work?), taking to some local hiking trails by day and doin' time at Disneyland by night. I'm so glad we were able to make it since last Monday, when I busted my ankle and thought it broken, I assumed I was gonna be couch-bound with a cast and (fingers crossed) good meds. Thankfully, no broken ankle (as mentioned here, it turned out to be a bruised bone). When I told the doc I felt kinda foolish even bothering him with something so silly he said, "The other day a guy came in because he saw white dots on his tongue. I told him, 'those are called tastebuds. Go home, eat something and use those white dots.'" So, I supposed I coulda been Taste Bud Man.

In other non-swollen-ankle/Ima-on-vacation news, I've got some exciting things planned this summer that I thought I'd share with you! Things that are sure to keep me busy and off the streets which is a good thing says my parole officer. 

So now I wanna know what are you up to this summer?! Fun vacays planned? Super awesome classes you are taking? Crafty projects you are dying to dig your hands into? Dude! I wanna know! Until next time, have fun, whatever you are up to.

I'm excited to announce that I'll be presenting once again at an AOE conference! I had so much fun attending the last conference and I learned so stinkin' much. Not to mention I loved the live chatting, my typing fingers could seriously not keep up! This conference I'll be talking about a topic that it seems you are either for or against: Having a Tech Free Art Room. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts on this topic and having an open convo during the live chat. So, who's attending with me?

Bruised Bone Tuesday: Yeah, I'm still whining about it. But it was so silly how it happened that I'm just confounded. I was walking through our disturbingly disastrous garage when my ankle bumped into the wheel of a suitcase. But what it really felt like was my suitcase shoved a red hot dagger into my ankle bone. Instantly that ankle swelled to the size of tennis ball while a slew of unfortunate words came outta my mouth. I had to wear these lovely flippy-floppies for the next coupla days. dress: vintage

Have ya'll heard of The Skillery? It's this groovy Nashville-based community that offers space for creative folks to either work independently or come together and learn from each other. And this gal is teaching a needle felting class there!

If you've been around this blog for a hot minute, you know I love me some needle felting. One of my fave projects was this portrait I created of my cat Asha! You can go here for all the gory kitty cat details. 

Finally Healed-Up Friday: Just in time to grab a crepe breakfast with one buddy and an ice cream lunch date with another. Because meeting -n- eating is what summertime is all about, says me. dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange; necklace: Pangea, Nashville; shoes: BC Shoes 

Aside from art education blogs, my fave blogs to read are those written by my fellow sewing sistahs. And Erin of Seamstress Erin is one of my go-to reads. I love Erin's blog because she's not your average sewer. This girl is like a super-genius with a great wit! So when she contacted me, along with some AMAZINGLY talented sewers (don't even ask how I got into this group!) saying that she had some acquired some turbans from the movie Rambo III and would I like to partake in a sew-along? I was all "yes, puhlease!" You can read her blog post all about it here.

I've already started working on the dress (oops, spoiler alert!)...here's to hoping Rambo approves! You can see what one sewer did with her fab turban fabric here.

Flying to LA Saturday: It's a four hour plus flight, ya'll. My goal is to always be comfy and to have plenty of layers. Those flights can get ice cold and this one was no exception. Glad I brought a scarf with me! dress: thrifted, Target; belt and cardigan: Anthropologie; necklace: Forever 21; sandals: Target

Aside from the conference, the class and that sew-along, I do hope to squeeze in some Back to School Sewing this month! I've been buying up these fun art teacher fabrics when I see them. Now! I need some one-on-one time with my sewing machine to get to work!

So many pretty pattern choices to choose from, ah! You don't even know how much time I waste staring at patterns and dreaming up dresses. Hours, people. Hours.

A Boulder-tastic Hike at Black Star Canyon: Dude, we climbed over giant boulders with notion that there'd be this amazing waterfall at the end. Of our 13 mile hike. Yeah, it was dried up. Oh well, lil exercise never killed anyone although it came real close since hubs was the one that picked this particular trail. Humph.

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DIY: Stenciled Embroidery

 I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a songwriter. It's true. Do you really think Emimen came up with all those lyrics on his own? I'm the real Real Slim Shady, ermkay. Don't believe me? Well then, lemme share with you a song I've been workin' on. It's a little tune I like to call The Thus Far Days of Summer Vacay: 

On the first day of vacay,

My summer gave to me

A busted ankle swollen to the size of a panda babe-ee.

On the second of vacay,

My summer gave to me

Flashbacks of last summer when I dropped a food processing blade on the same foot

and a busted ankle swollen to the size of a cat babe-ee 

(which I know is called a kitten but that didn't rhyme so bear with me)

On the third day of vacay

My summer gave to me

A visit to the doctor who said I bruised my ankle bone (what?!)

Flashbacks of last summer when I dropped a food processing blade on the same foot

and a busted ankle swollen to the size of, well, nothing. It healed. End of song.

I do hope your summer is off to a better bruised-boneless start, ya'll!

The hubs and I, when not busting ankles, have found ourselves on the road aplenty thus far. And, as I've chatted about before, one of my fave travel crafts is embroidery (you can read all sorts of fascinating embroideryness here, here and here, kids). Howevers, at the time of said hittin'-the-road-ness, I had nothing in the works. So, on a whim, I grabbed this thrifted stenciled piece with the idea that I'd improve upon it's half-a##'ed stencil-ness as seen above.

 Whatcha see here is a half embroidered piece. On the left side is the original state and on the right is the embroidered upon. Not to sound like a bragosaurus but, despite what the photo shows, the embroidery is a big improvement to the formerly just-stenciled state of the fabric.

See? I told ya's.

Which got me thinking. When I gave my students an End of the School Year survey (an In the Art Room post to come, ya'll), many of them wrote that they wanted to learn more weaving, sewing and "handcrafts", as one put it. I was thrilled to hear that since I loves me some fiber arts (and totally enjoyed teaching it this year!). However, teaching embroidery takes 4.Eve.Rrr...R. And sometimes the results are small due to the size of the stitching and the limited amount of patience (on behalf of both artist and art teacher). 

So, after working on this piece, I had the thought, "Why not have them stencil a design then embroider?" Actually, that's not what I thought at all. What I really thought was, "Why am I thinking about school, IT'S SUMMER!" And then I reminded myself that this is a blog where I pretend that I eat, drink and breathe art education and I needed to shut up before those five folks that read this catch on. 

Oops. Too late.

Ahem. What was I saying? It appears that I fell asleep and that some evil Summer-Loving Art Teacher Maniac took over for a moment. My apologies. 

For this here activity, you're gonna need to gather up the following:

• Stencils. I had these pre-mades from JoAnn's in my stash
• Fabric Paint. Left overs from this dress. 
• Fabric. I just used random bits from my scrap bin.
• Embroidery hoops.
• Stencil sponges. In a pinch, I used my makeup wedges as that's all I had on hand.
• Embroidery floss.
• Embroidery needle.

 Because just stenciling one color would be a snooze-fest, I decided to do a little color blend. I think the kids could handle that. Well. Maybe.

 The trick is watching where you stamp so you don't flip that wedge. Because a flipped wedgie just sounds terrible.

 Here's something interesting I noticed: the thicker the plastic stencil, the more underneath bleeding of the paint. The super thin stencils actually worked much better and produced a much more crisp image. Hmm. Not what I was expecting.

 Have you ever embroidered before? I'm gonna assume you've not. So lemme introduce to you The Running Stitch:

1.  Embroidery floss comes in strands of 6 pieces of floss (or thread). Cut your desired length (I usually go from hand to shoulder and clip) and separate 2 strands of floss from the 6. Do this slowly as the floss loves to tangle.

2. Ideally, you should run those two combined strands of embroidery floss over a lump of wax. Bee's wax is preferred. This will prevent the floss from tangling. And tangling sux.

3. Thread your needle with those bee's wax-y stands of floss and double knot one end. Frame your piece in an embroidery hoop. Starting from the back, poke your needle up at your starting point.

 4.  Go about a quart inch and dive your needle down. I'm using mine to outline the edge of the flower. You do whatever you want. Make veins for your leaves, fill in a shape, whatevers. Just be certain to pull that needle down until the knot on the back stops it.

 5.  Now for the next stitch, jump ahead a quarter inch and pop up pulling completely.

 6. And go backward to fill in that gap.

 7.  For your third stitch, pop up from the end of your last stitch. The reason you didn't do this previously is because you would be taking a stitch out. You see, you can never have your needle come out of a hole it just went into, it will take the stitch out. However, it works here because your previous stitch had gone backward. Say what? I don't know, I'm just as confused as you are. Let's keep stitching.

 8.  When you get to the point where your thread is as long as half the length of your hand, it's time to tie off and reload your needle. To tie off, flip your embroidery to the back. Slide your needle under a nearby stitch.

 9.  Pull slightly until there is only a loop of embroidery floss left. Then reverse that needle and go through that loop. Do this twice. That will create a secure knot.

Confused? Me too. Youtube it, kids.

 And there you go! You are on your way to a stenciled embroidery! I'm really excited to play around with this idea of combining these two techniques into one project for the kids. 

What are your thoughts? Got any awesome ideas you'd like to share? Please enlighten this bruised-bone barbarian, would ya?! 

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In the Art Room: The Art Show, Part 1

 It's official, ya'll: School's Out for the Summer! And it really truly couldn't have come at a better time. Our school wide art show was a week before the last days of school which was a good thing since I was basically a useless puddle of exhaustion after the fact. I'm just glad that my Stress-Related Art-Show Eyebrow-Twitch finally stopped as I was tired of the dude at Starbucks thinking I was hitting on him.

Before I share with ya'll the amazing artwork of my kindergarten through 2nd grade students (3rd and 4th grade kiddos and clay projects to be shared in another photo-laden post), I have just gotta give a great big 

Thank You! 

to the dozens of parent volunteers that popped in everyday for two weeks leading up to the art show to hang the artwork. That's right, they hung everything that the kids created all year (my rough estimate was about 2300 masterpieces). I'm super lucky to have such amazing support from the parents of my young artists. Ya'll are the bestest!

Okay, without further ado, I present to you the masterpieces outta Kindergartenland!

 In kindergarten, I like to start the school year with a great big fat unit on line. We sculpt with lines, paint a pattern of lines and create an abstraction of lines. These bright and happy paintings are always a favorite of mine.

Another fave this year was clay butterfly sculptures. I really love that crayon/watercolor technique for the little ones. It seemed to add more depth to their texture than glaze would. That painting on the right is another project from our line unit.

For Read Across America week, I wore my Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus dress and we created these cuties. This was a big hit with the kids and parents alike. We had a lot of fun trying out our wet-on-wet watercolor skills with this project. Look below and you'll see how they did that in the background of their work.

 One thing I love about having the parents hang the artwork is that each hangs the pieces a little differently. I find that this makes for more dynamic displays from class to class. Foxy lesson here and Starry Night Collages here.

 This year, I made signs for the art show that were inspired by that AMAZING art teacher over at Painted Paper. When I saw her post on art show signs, I knew I had to use our stash of leftover painted papers to make my own.

 Onto the 1st grade artwork. The little ones were so busy this year! One of our most recent masterpieces were these koinobori that we were able to hang in a large bank of windows. Details on that fun and quick lesson here.

 My 1st grade started the year creating those hilarious Viking Self Portrait collages with Rebecca, my former student teacher (who is RIGHT NOW interviewing for her own art teacher gig, wish her lucky, ya'll!). Details on those Starry Night Collages here and Party Pandas here. 

 Our second round of self-portraits were of a Japanese theme with ourselves dolled up in kimonos. Details on that lesson here. 

 When I was absent for a couple of days attending the NAEA conference in San Diego, I left my "But I'm Not an Artist!" sub directions on teaching the kids to draw these pandas. And, much to her surprise, her drawings, as well as the kids, turned out great! This also meant that I could come back to work with a lesson already started and simply bust out the watercolor paints for the kids to finish them. Details on those ceramic stars to come.

One final look at 1st grade before we move onto the...

 Again, the idea for these signs came from Painted Paper. Each set of signs was hung right above the hallways leading to that grade level. 

I really loved the work that my 2nd graders created this year. Some of my favorites were their circle loom weavings and their cherry blossom paintings. 

 Every year, I have my 1st through 4th grade students right an autobiography to hang with their artwork. This also proved to be a great sub lesson when I was out for a different occasion. Can't remember what. Booze Cruise, maybe? Wishful thinking. My 2nd grade also took part in the Viking and Kimono fun. 

 We hang ALL the artwork that the kids have created ALL year. Which means that one class can take up a whole lotta wall space. I have yet to find what sticks the best to cinderblocks in the muggy pre-summer heat of our halls. We've tried every kind of tape, that blue sticky stuff by Dapp, double-sided tape by 3M and hot glue. While hot glue works great, it's a headache trying to get it off the walls. Next school year, I'm begging and pleading for more cork strips.

 Paper marbling was a fast and fun project to teach about the Japanese art of Suminagashi. 

 I liked this lesson so much, I blogged about it twice. 

 I've always struggled with a circle loom weaving lesson where I loved the results as much as the kids did the process. In the past, we wove on CD's and unpainted white plates. The results were fine...but when we painted the plates this year, it seemed to take the weaving to a whole new level. 

And there you have it, ya'll! The 2-dimentional masterpieces by kindergarten through 2nd grade. Stay tuned in the next coupla weeks as I share the rest of the art show as well as lessons with ya. 

Until then, how do you know it's officially summer? Well, it's 1pm and I'm still in my pajamas! May your days be filled with pjs and craft projects, teachery folk! For the rest of ya, take a day or three off, you've earned it. Tell your boss a crazy art teacher said so!

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