DIY: Clipboard Gallery

Do you ever have one of those projects come to you because of a series of events? That's how my Clipboard Gallery idea came to be. 

But, before I get in to it, let's talk clipboards in the art room. Do you use them? We do ALL THE TIME! In fact, the original set I were purchased my first year teaching. Here's how I use clipboards in my art room: when we are guided drawing together on the floor and need a drawing surface; when tables are pretty messy with paint, glue or chalk and the kids need a "clean" surface for drawing; when my early finishers want to lounge out and draw in my early finisher areas, they grab a clipboard. Do y'all use them in your art rooms?

While I love clipboards, my system for organizing them was anything but desirable. I had a huge plastic bin that the kids just tossed them into with a loud clatter. It was ugly, took up floorspace and always overflowing with clipboards. Then an art teacher buddy suggested I check out a clipboard holder...and my life was changed forever. BEHOLD! My amazing clipboard holder!

 (Cue the angels singing) RIGHT?! Here's the link. The also come in half sizes which can be MOUNTED TO THE WALL! Say what?! But I needed a full set so I went with this one. It holds 24. Some of my classes are larger than that so I do have a small bin under this table that holds my spare ones.

Now I had a new problem. My old clipboards were 1. ugly and 2. all sorts of different sizes. So I ordered these in a variety of colors. Rainbow, of course. Have you met me?! 

With my new and sparkly set of clipboards, I was left wondering what to do with my old ones. I was halfway out the door to dump them in the teacher's lounge on the freebie table when I walked past this hot mess:

 What you see here is my Masterpiece Gallery. It's my little place in the "foyer" of my art room (I have a big ole room and yeah, I got a foyer) where I like to showcase the artwork the kids create at home. The problem? It's become more like a Mess-terpiece Gallery with pictures hanging crooked, falling down, overlapping. It's a disaster! AND my inbox is overflowing with more sweet drawings!

 Side note: with 30 minute classes, a lot of my class time was getting eaten away by kids giving me drawings and us chatting about them. While I do love doing that, I just don't have the time. So I got a mailbox this year an the kids put their drawings inside and put the little flag up. They loving doing that and letting me know that there is a surprise inside! BUT, as you can see, it's overflowing too!

As I was walking by this mess, I had an a-ha moment. I'd use my old junky clipboards to create another area, outside of my room (as I have no more wall space) to showcase artwork created at home. And the idea of the Clipboard Gallery was born. 

But first, I had to spray paint these guys white as they were a mess!

Despite the cold, we had some sunny days this week so it was perfect. Once dry, I spray painted them rainbow-y.

Look how well they match my room!

Hanging them was super easy because I always use these 3M Command Velcro strip things. Went up in a snap!

The giant clipboard was one I scored at the thrift store a while back for a couple bucks. They do sell them online...the cheapest I found was $30! So I got a steal. I did purchase more clipboards this weekend at the Dollar Tree so I can add more clipboards...I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular spot to share my students creations from home. How do you all display kids work from home? Love to know!

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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: Getting to Know You Sculptures, Part 2

We are wrapping up week two here at my school and it's shaping up to be a wild, crazy and colorful start! I decided to add another layer to our Getting to Know You Sculptures with another sheet!

You can find the free downloadable link right here!  

I was excited to add this second layer to their project. It allowed me to spend a little time continuing to teach our rules and routines...while still providing the kids with a much needed creative outlet. I was also able to share three NEW paper sculpture techniques. Creating a tab, cutting OUT a spiral and making fringe. I have a short video of me teaching this to my third graders so I'll be sure and share super soon. 

Until then, you can probably take a look at these sculptures and figure it out! Now the one question I've been getting a lot of is...HOW ARE YOU STORING THESE?!

Answer: ALL OVER THE FLIPPIN' PLACE! Seriously, I may have not completely thought this through. Story of my life. They are going to be hung up super soon so that will get them outta my hairs. I also plan to do a follow-up activity with these next art class...I'm thinking a "Can You Guess the Artist" game or some sort of Gallery Walk...the idea is still coming to me so I'll keep you posted. I'm also working on LESSONS for next week as we're all moving on from this. Yikes! What are we even gonna do?! I'll keep you posted (which is code for Y'ALL KNOW I DON'T EVEN KNOW!). 

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DIY: Art Room Decor

If you recall from this post, I recently picked up a bunch of oars (or paddles, whatever you fancy callin' 'em) from a local big box craft store. Initially I was just going to paint the primary colors...but they looked so good, I decided to do the secondary colors as well to create a large color wheel. I finished off the color wheel last week and thought I'd share it with y'all today. 

In case you missed the Paddle Painting Mayhem, here it is in 60 seconds or less:

 If only I could work that fast! I do consume a ton of coffee...but I've not reached Level: Lightening Fast...yet. 

Because the grouping of paddles ended up being so stinkin' big, I had to completely rearrange my art room to find a wall space big enough for it. That meant a complete overhaul of this part of my art room. I was fine with that, as I was ready for a change. In fact, this summer, when I popped by my art room, I noticed some of my displays were falling. In a fit of annoyance, I tore it ALL down. You can see what this area previously looked like here. Getting rid of the previous displays forced me to rethink my space and my displays, making both more intentional. 

By the way, I created a video of my desired art room routines...and showed it today on our first day of art. That's what you see on the big screen. I'll do a complete blog post about that soon but in the meantime, you can check out the video here:

It was a huge hit with the kids today and...IT WORKED! Yay!

Having this big space also allowed me to hang my ART room rules. I shared them recently here. You can hear me go over them a little bit in the video above. I plan to do a more extensive chat about my rules soon...they really tie in with the growth mindsets that we are working toward in my art class this year.

After I hung up the oars, I noticed that I had enough space to allow for the tertiary colors. So I cut out some cardboard with an Exacto knife, painted them and attached them to the wall with hot glue. The oars were hung up with Command Velcro Strips and have worked like a charm!

Over the summer, I managed to pick up several folk art pieces. The Mojo Man and the Big Love signs are by my friend Bebo. The other paintings are by Okra Girl. I painted the Stay Sharp sign using a wooden picket fence I found when shopping for those wooden oars. Here's a video of how that was created in 60 seconds or less:

 I'm currently addicted to painting all things found in the wooden aisle of my craft store! 

 A couple of art teacher buddies have really taken off with these ideas and I love seeing what they create! One buddy painted the saying, "Draw Light Until You've Got It Right"...how perfect for those pencils!

Another painted hers into crayons, hung it horizontally and it is going to display her art jobs. Y'all better believe I'm doing that very same thing! Great minds, I love it.

By the way, if you have not entered to win the book giveaway, GET YOURSELF OVER HERE AND DO IT ALREADY. Please and thank you! 

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In the Art Room: A Fiber-tastic Twitter Chat!

Hey, favorite friends! I'm super stoked to share with y'all that I'll be hosting a Twitter chat tomorrow in conjunction with the Wisconsin Art Education Association. If you've never joined the fun of a Twitter chat, here are a couple of things you should know:

*  To join the chat, simply search #wiartchat in the search bar. Starting at 8pm, you'll see the chatter starting with questions by me about all things fiber. 

* To add to the conversation, begin your tweet with the hashtag and an A for answer the number of the question you are responding to. For example, "#wiartchat A1: Yes, fiber arts is in my curriculum!" 

* Know your abbreviations. Because of the limited amount of characters, folks will often respond with abbreviations which can be a little confusing. Just think of it like reading a text and the shortened words will make sense. 

* Hold on to your seats: these chats are often only 30 minutes in length. With a half dozen questions and a bunch of folks responding, it can get VERY busy. My first time joining in on a chat involved me just taking it all in. Relax and enjoy the ride.

Now, let's talk about what all the tweeting will entail:

I'll be resharing the questions during the chat so no need to put them to memory. I hope to chat with y'all tomorrow night, it will be so fun!

Of course, I'm thrilled to be chatting with my buddies in Wisconsin as I'll be there for their fall conference leading a fiber class and talking it up in LaCrosse on October 20th - 21st. You can find out more details and register to attend here. 

 And, since we are talking all things fiber-tastic...

Just a reminder that I'm teaching a fibers course over on AOE. Remember, if you use the code SAVE10CASSIEART17, you'll get a 10% discount!

So looking forward to chatting with all y'all real soon! 

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What the Art Teacher Wore #116 and an Art Project Update

Oh, Flowery Day!: I've already started the long-drawn out process of packing up my summer duds and replacing 'em with fall frocks (which I'll do all over again in two months when I pack up the fall clothing and bust out the winter stuff. The fun of being a clothing hoarder never ends. Sigh). Howevers, since we are learning about colorful Latin America, I wanted to dress the part one more week before saying adios to all my colorful clothes. dress and belt: thrifted; jacket: Lucky Brand; sandals: Frye; big fat hair flower: DIY

And another photo because I just wanted you to see the back of this groovy jacket. I can't take credit for it but it's long inspired me to do the same to some snooze-fest sweaters in my closet. 

Well, hello there, kids! I dunno about you but these past coupla weeks have seemed to swallow me whole. By the time I get home from work, make some feeble attempt at cooking dinner (by the way, am I the only one that will occasionally [and by "occasionally", I mean once a week] have Pop Corn/Ice Cream dinners?) and kinda clean, up it's practically bedtime. Which is driving me crazy because my DIY mountain is piling up. My sewing room currently looks like a studio for a dozen different nut-job artsy types who lack direction and have seriously low standards of cleanliness. Which is pretty much how it always looks, dunno why I'm acting like that's anything new. 

Aside from all that slack-tasticness, I gotta tell ya that my email inbox has been filling up with some super fantastic Costume Contest entries! Are y'all planning on dressing up as an artist or artwork? If so, don't forget to send your photos my way (cassieart75@gmail.com) to enter to win a feature here as well as spot in SchoolArts magazine! Looking forward to see your costume!

In other news, I'll be speaking at Bowling Green State University Monday, October 6th! I'm excited to share with y'all how I use my (questionable) fashion sense as an inspiration for teaching. At least I think that's what I'll be sharing. Regardless, I'd love to see and meet you there!

All that aside, I thought I'd share with you the start of some Latin American-inspired work that my students began this week. Last week, you saw our inspiration and now here's a sneak peak at our works-in-progress. What in the world are your kids doing in the art room this week? 

In first grade-ville, we're working on our Amate-inspired drawings of floral and fauna. After learning about Mexico, Amate paper and macaws, we were introduced to a lil Spanish by this guy:

That's right, I totes upped my geeky art teacher game and used this giant macaw puppet to teach the kids Spanish as well as the primary colors (thanks, Folkmanis, for that wise choice of feathers!). I picked up this guy from amazon and the kids loved him. They were so excited to draw their own macaws after Manuel (his name) made his appearance.

Warm/Cool Days of Fall: I never know how to dress when it comes to fall. Cool in the mornings, warm by noon, this weather is as moody as me. dress: thrifted; scarf: Urban Outfitters; belt: Anthro 

My second grade artists are working on collage landscapes with the arpilleras of Chile in mind. We worked for several days creating painted papers (inspired by one of my fave blogs, Painted Paper! Thanks, Laura!). Now that our land is complete, it's time to add some fun details. I'll keep you posted on these beauties.

Florals and Frida: Did anyone else scoop up those Frida shirts that Forever 21 was selling? Did you know they have a "Artist Series"? They've featured the artwork of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat which is awesome. What's not so awesome is that it's usually crop tops and tube tops. Not exactly teacher attire. But I suppose they aren't expecting teachers to shop at a place called "Forever 21", now are they? Frida top: Forever 21; skirt and shoes: thrifted

My third grade is getting ready to embark on one of my fave projects: Tree Weaving. This week they created their backgrounds. We learned how to mix three different values to create space in our landscape. The kids were allowed to use whatever colors they wanted for their paintings which meant some created deserts, fields or beaches. I can't wait to see how their woven tree looks in the foreground. 

Bird Brained Friday: Since my first graders were drawing birds, I thought a bird-themed dress would be appropriate. Not that it could compete with that bird puppet, lemme tell you. They were all, "cool dress, Stephens, now BRING OUT THE PUPPET!" Kids these days, I tell ya. sweater and dress: thrifted

Lastly, we have my fourth graders Metepec suns. These kids used the same method that my third grade students did to create a three-dimensional face. Several kids are creating a sun/moon face (those are the unfinished ones). I borrowed heavily Denise Logan's book Dynamic Art Projects (great book, y'all. Check it.) but I'm planning on having the kids do a little something different for the rays of the sun. For that, you'll have to stay tuned. Until next time!

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In the Art Room: The Art Show, Part 2

 It's kinda funny to think that just a couple weeks ago, my school's hallways looked like this. Of course, now that school's out, the halls resemble some sort of institution (which, let's be honest, those last couple of weeks, we coulda all be institutionalized. The kids, the teachers, shoot even the class pets, were all a wee bit bonkers.) As I mentioned in my last art show post, all artwork that all students have created all year is hung for this show which is like hundreds of masterpieces. The World's Most Amazing Parental Volunteers hang everie-thang, can you believe that? I'm a lucky girl, this I know.

In my last art show post, I shared with ya'll the work of the wee ones in kindergarten through 2nd grade. I've yet to share with you the clay projects that were also displayed at the art show because I'm slowly putting together the how-to posts on those babies. When that's done, I'll wrap up this art show series. Oh! And if you wanna see some art shows of the past, you can see last year's show here and here.

And now, without further jibber-jabber, I present to you the masterpieces of 3rd and 4th grade with loads of linky-loos to lessons...

 For the art show, the parent volunteers hang the work outside the classroom. I don't give any directions on how to hang...just cross your fingers and use enough sticky tack to make it stay. I love how each volunteer hangs the work differently.

 In third grade, we started out the year learning about Norway and Vikings. My amazing student teacher Rebecca had just returned from a trip to Norway and this was a lesson created by her (and influenced by Painted Paper!). I wrote up a blog post all about Rebecca's adventures and this lesson here.

 My goal for this past school year was to create a mural with each grade level. I only partially achieved that goal (my younger kiddos did a collaborative mural to be shared in an upcoming post). My 3rd grade created a Magritte-inspired mural that proved to be the art project that just kept on giving. You can see examples of that in the work at the bottom of this photo.

 Here's one part of the Magritte project with tissue paper collaged landscape backgrounds.

This enormous beast of a mural hangs right outside of my art room. I think it's there to stay a while, I love seeing it when I walk out of my art room. The details of creating this mural are here.

 The paper we used to create the birds for the mural and our collage landscapes were so cool we decided to use them in yet another Magritte-y project. Final installment of Magritte series here.

 After all that Viking and Magritte-ness, I introduced the kids to the world of Asian art with a heavy dose of Ming vases and cherry blossom trees.

 This was a super fun lesson that incorporated so many thing. A review of watercolor techniques, symmetrical vase design, drawing a narrative, shading/shadow making and new ink painting methods. Full lesson here.

 

Both 3rd and 4th grade were introduced to Chinese calligraphy. We learned to grind out own ink and paint with sumi-e bamboo brushes. This was a big hit and we seriously painted tons of these characters. After a couple of classes doing that, the kids picked their fave to mount, label and frame.

 My 4th grade this year was like a dream group. We had such a good thing going, as they loved being in art as much as I did having them. Which was a bit of a problem as I was therefore always late sending them back to class. Seeing them go at the end of this school year was very hard for me, sniff. I'll miss them so much!

They kicked off the start of this school year creating this huge mural for a canned food drive. Full details here.

 I think this Viking project was one of my favorite lessons this year. I simply love all the watercolor techniques that the kids incorporated into their work. I will definitely be doing a redo of this here lesson in the future (I have a bad habit of doing a lesson only once as I get a little bored with repeats).

 Again, another lesson with many layers of stuff taught. It's like an onion, this project. Without the onion breath.

 These guys also did some Chinese calligraphy. However, theirs included a hanger with Sculptey beads on the end of a wooden dowel and a red stamp.

 Like with the wee ones, I also have these kids write an artist biography. These are slightly different though in that they are to also have friends add comments about them. I'll share more details about those bios in an upcoming post (I keep saying that, I hope I can keep up with all this "up-coming" posting!).

 When learning about Asia, we did some Suminigashi which is Japanese paper marbling. Details here.

 When I ran outta paper marbling supplies mid-way through the lesson (don't you hate that?! Argh!) I did a quick switch to chalk marbling...which I kinda liked even better!

 With those stars we used in the chalk stenciling, we created some fun narrative collages.

 Near the end of the school year, we put our sumi-e painting techniques to good use with these paintings. Students could create either bamboo, cherry blossom or pine trees after practicing on newsprint.

 I've not written up a lesson on this project yet...it's on my summertime to-do.

 A favorite was adding the tissue paper leaves or flowers. They just couldn't stop adding these, loved 'em so!

 Of course, in my absence at NAEA, the kids drew these adorable Chinese pandas. When I returned, they put their watercolor painting skills to work on the background. Lesson here.

 The day before the art show, in 30 minutes, the kids created these sweet things. On the night of the art show, we also host an ice cream social. The kids painted these for the occasion and I managed to get them up the day of the show! This was seriously the easiest 30 minute lesson ever. I'll be sharing the details in an upcoming post,

And there you have it, ya'll! The 2014 Art Show! Stay tuned for the final installment of the show which will include kid clay projects. Until then!

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