In the Art Room: All Things Clay!

When I first started teaching, teaching clay was in my curriculum and I FREAKED.THE.FUNK.OUT. I didn't take a single clay class in college and only made a couple of pieces in high school. I managed to melt down a kiln, explode hundreds of pieces and even drop my share of masterpieces. Despite all of that, after teaching art, clay and kiddos for over 20 years now (and having written a book on the topic!), I feel like I can finally share my (semi-limited) wealth of knowledge on all things clay!

While my book was written for children who don't have access to a kiln, many of the projects can be used with kiln fire clay! 

Over the last three weeks, I have shared everything I know about kiln fire clay on my podcast! It's so much...that I had to break the series into three episodes just to squeeze it all in. So, if you'd like to take a listen here, here you go:


But wait, there's more...



AND just a pinch more...

In case you need a visual, as I often do, here's a video of some of the clay tips I mentioned. For the complete blog post, you can visit here. 

 More details on my favorite tools and how I set up for clay in the video and my podcast!

Part 3 of this series is all about glaze and glaze alternatives. If you'd like a video with more, check this one out:

The blog post with more details on glaze can be found here. 

And if you need a visual of the clay projects I mentioned or just some clay project ideas, then check out this post with my very favorite clay projects! Have fun! 

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In the Art Room: Ceramic Flowers with Third Grade

Well, spring is here but I gotta tell ya, for me, it feels like my spring done sprung. I'm absolutely beat this time of year. Between putting together our school-wide art show (where I've not hung a single thing, thanks to all of my parent volunteers. I.LURVE.YOUS.) and trying to clean up after a year of bad put-stuff-away-after-you-use-it habits (I'm so bad, y'all. I've got more cabinet space then Ole Mother Hubbard and I still leave everything out all over my counters), I'm a walkin' talkin' zombie. Therefores, I have no DIY goodness to offer you this week, dears. Howeverness, I do have this super sweet ceramic flower project that my third graders just wrapped up!

 (Insert "awwww" emoji here.)

Like, that's a sculpted hummingbird created without instruction, y'all. (Insert "child prodigy" emoji here. Which I imagine looks like Doogie Howser. Or a childhood photo of me. Ahem.)

And a frog snagging his lunch. Let's face it, these sculptures are way cooler than any DIY of mine. Here's how these crafty kids created 'em. 

 We started out with some low-fire clay the size of a grapefruit. and a styro bowl. 

 We then created ping-pong ball sized spheres. 

And proceeded to squish 'em flat. We kept the thickness as thick as a cookie. Any thinner will become too fragile and too thick takes for-evah to dry. And we ain't got time for dat!

Once they were all squishied, we lined them all up and went to war with the one wee piece on the left. Actually I have no idea why I snapped this photo and then proceeded to share it here. I'm tellin' ya. The end-o-the-year has devoured that gray blob between my ears. 

Shape a couple of those flattened circles into leafy shapes if you wanna. 

 Use a pencil to draw veins. Again, if you wanna. 

 Start layering the leaves and flower petals into the bowl. For slipping and scoring, we use a toothbrush dipped in slip. We still use the terminology but this method is way easier than actually having the kids score with a pen tool. 

Why am I talking, these photos are pretty self-explanatory, right? You don't even need me, just the pics. I'm like IKEA directions but way easier and without the long hours of wrestling with particle board only to discover you've got a couple screws loose. Both figuratively and literally. 

 Oh, look! A flower donut!

 Fill it in,y'all. 

Just to make sure the center is secure and all flower petals are attached, some kids added a coil around the center of the flower.

 And viola! Finished! 

From there I went into my lil speech about how you can make anything in all of clay land if you know how to create a coil, slab and a sphere. Together we brainstormed some ideas on what we'd create and just how that could be accomplished with those three things. These ceramic pieces were created in one 60 minute class period. 

 Once they were bisque fired, we used Amaco's Teacher's Palette Glaze which I looooove. The colors were so bright and rich that I'm an instant fan. 

Today the kids were able to catch a glimpse of their projects while creating labels for the art show. They were thrilled with the transformation. Glazing with kids is truly magical.

Almost as magical as their imagination! Whutz your fave clay project? 

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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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