DIY: Air Dry Clay Vases!

Hey there, friends! 

I'm excited to share a little something I discovered with one of my favorite art supplies: Celluclay(this link will lead you to my Amazon list of supplies). As you might know...I've created a TON of creations with my students and for myself with Celluclay. It's a paper-based air-dry clay that really lends itself to a whole lot of exploration. HOWEVER...one thing I never loved about working with the stuff is painting my creation after the fact. It's got a rough, scratch surface which is difficult to paint AND you have to wait several days for it to dry completely BEFORE you can paint it. That is...until I discovered...you can TINT the clay! Let me show you how:

In this video, I'll share with you two ways of tinting your Celluclay with acrylic paint (although I've not tried it, I'm sure tempera paint would work just fine). You can prep the clay by tinting it ahead of time, wrapping it in plastic and storing in your fridge. This is what I'm doing for a 2-hour class I'm leading today. I've got all my colorful balls stashed in the fridge (ahem). OR...at another class I lead, I had the participants mix up their own clay! I demonstrate both methods in my video. 

What I love about this method of tinting the clay is that I also don't have to struggle to paint in the small areas. For example, painting around those squiggles would have been a struggle and definitely would have had me questioning my life's choices. Now...I can just create the color of clay that I want!

I did cover each piece with a layer of satin-finish ModPodge to help further anchor the pieces in place, give the vases a finish and waterproof them a bit. ModPodge comes in so many different finishes now that it's awesome! They make a sparkle finish, and indoor/outdoor finish...you name it! In a pinch...diluted Elmer's glue also works in place of ModPodge if you can't get your kitten mittens on any.

I have worked with Celluclay with my students in the past. It's fun stuff, especially if you don't have a kiln or you have sculpture projects in mind. For a smaller scale project, my second graders created these sculpted hearts. If you tap the link, you'll find a video of the lesson for you to share with your students:

This was a lesson we did in just a few 30 minute classes! We used foil that we shaped into a heart as our armature. I pre-prepped the Celluclay which made it so much easier! Once dry, the students used acrylic to add color. We hung these in a little popsicle stick frame.

My older students created these Celluclay taxidermy heads that were a blast! You can see all the details here. 

But back to the vases...I was going to include in this post all of the things I've created with Celluclay BUT...I've made so much that I think it deserves it's own blog post. So...that will be coming soon. I also have a ton of videos on my YouTube channel if you are curious about more Celluclay exploration. Check the playlist Clay Projects for Adults and Children for more. 

I will warn you: making these vases is HIGHLY addictive! I even thought for a split second that I was going to go into the vase-making business and started day dreaming about opening a booth at a local craft fair! And then I looked around at all my other half finished art creations which were giving me the evil eye and thought....well...let's just take it one day at a time ;) 

I don't know if you can see this but...look closely at the top of this vase. When the squiggles dried, they did pull away from the vase a little bit. I assume that is because I didn't have the squiggles secured to the vase well enough and they dried, thus pulling away, before the vase itself did. So really make sure you have your bits and pieces anchored down. That seems like a good rule of thumb for all aspects of life ;)

Please do let me know if you have any questions! You can always drop me a line on my YT channel. Unfortunately, due to spam comments, I did have to turn the comments off here. So sorry! 

BTW...I know I've only shared a little of this big news on my Instagram but...did you know I wrote a Decide Your Direction art adventure book for kids? That's right!! I'm so excited and I'll be talking about this more super soon but until then...yay! I always read to my students while they work but I could never find the perfect "art" novel...so I wrote one! This book introduces 7 different artists and the reader decides which adventures to go on. It has 32 different endings and over 80 illustrations! Like I said, I'll share more here soon but if you just can't wait, you can get yourself a copy here! It's perfect for the holidays...and I'll even sign it for you!

Read more »

DIY: Skull Planter!

I spotted the coolest planter ever the other night at Cracker Barrel: it was a large plastic skull planter and I just had to have it!

Until I saw the $40 price tag.

Then I remembered how a while back I made TONS of Halloween decor with one of my long forgotten favorite art supplies: CELLUCLAY. You can check out all of those creations (well, most of them anyway), here. 

Here's the how-to video!

The process is super easy! All you need is Celluclay and a plastic planter...and acrylic paint. That's it! Oh...and maybe a cute little plant. This is one I scored at Walmart years ago on sale. It was so sad and almost dead that I named it Peanut. Peanut is now living it's best life in my brand new skull planter!

Part of the magic is in the painting when it comes to this kind of thing. I used a base coat of gray and then added a darker gray to the eye sockets and the nostrils to really deepen the look. Then I used diluted off white paint to go over that in the light areas. Finally I used a dry brush and white paint to add the highlights. 

I won't be leaving this outside. Celluclay, since it's waterbased, would probably not fair well outdoors. 

So in my over-crowded plant window, she will go!

Thanks for letting me share! I actually think I need to make more of these. Why, I have no idea! But it was just so fun and Halloween season is my absolute favorite!

Read more »

DIY: Top Favorite Fall Crafts

Fall is my very favorite. Halloween is my very favorite. If you've been around this blog for a couple of sessions then you know that it's this time of year that I'm usually firing up the hot glue gun, busting out the Celluclay and creating things that go bump in the night. This year...well, I'm just a little busy with other things to craft any spooky goodness. However, I do believe I'm pretty well stocked in all things frightening. So I thought I'd put them all together in one big ole blog post! All links will take you back to the original post which, more than likely, will have a how-to video. Happy Crafting!

1. Probably one of my all time favorite fall creations were these Zombie Head Planters. This was at the height of Walking Dead/Zombie popularity (remember when EVERY movie was a zombie movie?! Not that I'm complaining but, really, how many zombies movies do we need?!). I loved creating the expressions for these dead dudes!

2. These Halloween miniature pieces were fun to craft on an afternoon. The pumpkin dude was created from paper clay found at the craft store. And the little painting was a copy of a vintage Halloween creation. 

3. UGH, THIS PHOTO MAKES ME LOVE HALLOWEEN SO MUCH! I created these creepy heads with Styrofoam head forms found at Joann's, cheesecloth and liquid starch. That creepy mummy just might be my favorite.

4. The things you can do with that liquid starch and cheesecloth combo, y'all! This was a vintage music box thingie that I transformed into Frank and his Bride. Can I get a gig where I just sit around and make Halloween stuff 24/7? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE AMAZING! 

5. When I found this old jewelry box at the thrift store, I KNEW I had to make it into a book of spells. Weird? Probably! But I'm telling you, Celluclay is magical and you can make just about anything with it!

6. On that same thrifting trip, I found a bunch of bottles and decided to craft potion bottles from them!

7. I've got my eye on you. All of 'em! How-to video included in this creep-tastic EYE POPPING blog post...sorry, I had to. 

8. What I really love most about creating is taking something boring and transforming it into something insane. This was a little "Country Store" bird house type thing...that I completely spook-i-fied. I love the little light at the top! Details here. 

9. Wow, you're such a chatterbox! Did I mention that I love creating with Celluclay? Okay, lemme tell you what it is: it's basically a paper pulp type of clay. It comes in dry form and all you do is add water. I love to add it to an armature, whether it be one I made or one I've thrifted. Once the creation is dry, I usually paint them all black and dry brush the color on top...I love the antiqued look it gives. Details on these guys can be found here. 

10. Yes, in case you are wondering, that IS a candy corn tree. More deets on that in a second. First, can we talk about that eye-popping dude? Loved creating those creepy skulls!

11. Gangster Bats! Beware...they'll give you an offer you can't refuse. 

12. The Halloween creation that started it all...these guys! I made them back in 2015 and they are still my most favorite thing! LOOK at those faces, so silly and happy. Details here.

13. The Bride has ALWAYS been my favorite...mostly because I find the actress, Elsa Lancaster, so striking! This was so much fun to paint...I need to paint more, I miss it. Mixing all those different tones tho? NOT my favorite!

14. Is it even fall without Day of the Dead creations?! I think not...they speak to my love of color on these cloudy days filled with crunchy brown leaves. These planters were so fun to paint!

15. We travel a lot during the fall...mostly to our haunted house events. I love to have a craft on hand to work on and embroidery is usually my go-to. This reversible necklace was created during one of our Halloween adventures.

16. Hosting craft nights is one of my favorite things...something I don't make the time to do right now...but hope to in the near future! My artsy friends and I created these guys on a craft night a couple years ago and they are still my favorite. 

17. Decorating a candy corn tree counts as a fall craft, right?! This tree is from Treetopia and it's just about the best thing ever. I have a rainbow version in my art room!

18. I've never officially blogged about my Hitchhiking Ghosts painting inspired by Disney's The Haunted Mansion because I felt like I never finished it! But I kinda don't mind it in it's ghastly ghostly state...and I'm pretty sure I'm just too lazy to finish it.

And there you have it! My Top 18 Fave Fall Crafts! I'll be continuing this lil series with my fave fall art projects for kids and, of course, my fave fall ensembles. Yay! It's fall, y'all! 

Read more »

In the Art Room: Paint Tube Sculptures

 So, a while back I shared with y'all that my students were sculpting art supplies. My first graders made pencils, some of my fourth graders made glue bottles, my third graders made crayons, and my second graders made glue sticks and scissors (which I've not blogged about yet! Stay tuned!). Two of my fourth grade classes made tubes of paint. We JUUUUUUST finished them off this week as I totally forgot about them in the middle of us working with clay, sewing our pizza pillows and end-of-the-year/art show madness. So, without further ado, here they are! 

 For this lesson, we used toilet paper tubes as our armature. We wrapped them with Activa's Rigid Wrap and created the paint with Celluclay. Here's the video tutorial I created:

Instead of having the kids paint the words on the tube, which proved to be a touch difficult for me, they came up with their own names and wrote them on a white label. That was then attached to a black strip of paper which I hot glued to their tubes. 

 Once the tubes were created, we did the 100 Color Challenge to come up with our own unique color for our tube. The challenge was apart of my evaluation. You can check out more of that here:

Once the kids had come up with their color, they added that and their own concoction of gray to the tube. 

 Dreaming up the color names was probably the best part!

 With our art show just two weeks away, I'm excited to see all of our art supply sculptures on display. 

 If we'd had the time, I would have loved for these guys to create palettes and paint brush sculptures too...but the school year just isn't long enough for all the fun!

 For our art show, we're going to have quite the mix of 3D displays: art supplies, super heroes and pizzas! I've tried to think of a way to have them all make sense together...but they just don't and that's okay. 

 I also coulda spent an entire year having the kids sculpt art supplies, it was so fun! 

 I cannot wait to share with you how are art show is progressing. I'm sorry I've been spotty here...it's just the busiest time of the year! You know what that's like, right? 

 To seal these projects, they were covered in Extreme Glitter ModPodge...yes, that's a thing. For the bottom, ModPodge was added and then sprinkled with silver fine glitter.

 The kids and I are thrilled with how they turned out! 

 I'm down to just a few more days of art classes with this fourth grade bunch...which makes me sad. I've taught them since kindergarten...I hope they have as fond of memories of me as I have of them! 

 Thanks for letting me share this project with y'all...if you've given it a shot, I'd love to hear about it!

Read more »