Cassie Stephens: elementary art teacher

Showing posts with label elementary art teacher. Show all posts

Saturday, March 21, 2015

In the Art Room: See you in New Orleans!

Hey, y'all! Please pardon my absence on this here blog...I've been crazy busy spring breakin' and preparing for the art teacherin' conference in New Orleans! Which one of y'all are going? I do hope to see y'all there. There will be plenty of chances for us to get together and chat as I foolishly decided to present a buncha times. In case you are interested, I thought I'd throw my prezi dates and times out there for y'all:

Thursday, March 26th:

2:00 - 2:50 PM

Write? Right! Publishing to Advocate Your Art Program

Pam Stephens, Nancy Walkup, Cassie Stephens, Nicole Briscoe

Join four published authors to explore publishing your art-teaching ideas and then turn those ideas into advocacy for your program. Includes practical suggestions, tips, and writing guidelines. Interactive Discussion

Hilton Hotel/Chart B/Riverside Building

4:00 – 4:25

10 Exciting Ways to Teach Art Vocabulary They Won’t Forget

Cassie Stephens

Learn new methods of enriching student vocabulary in fun and innovative ways. Songs, word games, call and response methods, and sign language are just a few of the exciting methods introduced. Best Practice Lecture

Convention Center/Meeting Room R05/Second Level

Friday, March 27th:

11:00 - 11:50 AM

Elementary Carousel of Learning: Teacher Art Blogs

Nancy Walkup

Four accomplished elementary art educators from across the country will share their successful art blogs for their art rooms. Phyllis Brown of There's a Dragon in my Art Room, Laura Lohmann of Painted Paper, Sheryl Depp of Primary Art with Mrs. Depp and Cassie Stephens of that blog with her name because she wasn't creative enough to come up with anything else.

Convention Center/Meeting Room 216/Second Level

1:00 to Wheneverness

Meet Art Ed Bloggers in the AOE Booth!

Meet up and chat with some of your fave art ed bloggers in the AOE booth in the vendor's hall! I know I absolutely loved meeting my blogging heroes and well as chatting with the 5 folks that read this here blog! Drop by and let's chat, y'all!

Saturday, March 28th

7:00 - 8:50 PM

Design Your Own Curriculum-Aligned Clothing Line

Cassie Stephens

Instead of simply talking to your students about famous artists or their works of art, why not become the three-dimensional element that brings the experience to life? In this workshop, you will learn the art of needle felting and apply that skill to the creation of an apron. This apron will be designed with your own curriculum in mind and will be ready to wear in your art room. Armed with this new method of altering clothing, as well as other techniques introduced, you will be able to design your own curriculum-aligned clothing line. Hands-On Workshop Studio (2 hours) Ticket Required. (Sorry, y'all. This one is SOLD OUT.)

Hilton Hotel/Rosedown/3rd Floor

And there you have it, kids! If you aren't able to attend this year's NAEA conference, don't you fret. I'll be sure to post both what I shared and all that I learned right here. If you want minute by minute action, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Looking forward to chatting with y'all both in for realz life and via the interwebs.

DIY: A Waterlilies Dress (and Jacket Refurb!) after Monet

Y'all know those people who go on vacations and come back and wanna show you their One Million Photos of One Million Boring Thangs? Well, this here post is kinda like that in that I've got One Million Photos for y'all. Hopefully they won't be as much of a snoozefest as yo mama's trip to Vegas to play the slots complete with pictures of the buffet bars and awkward drunken middle-aged lady dancing in rando fountains. Ahem.

But when you spend what feels like One Million Years on a dress, you kinda wanna share the daylights outta it, you know? Therefore, I present to you A Water Lilies Dress after Monet in a gazillion pics or less.

By now, if you've hung around this here blog for a wee while (and for that, I thank you kindly), you know I kinda have a thing for creating dresses after famous artists and their works. My most recent one was this Mondrian number but then there's also been a Starry Night, a Warhol frock, a couple of Kandinsky's, a Great Wave, a The Scream number, this Keith Haring jacket and skirt, and a Lichtenstein dealio. There are still a ton of artist-inspired dress ideas rolling around in my itty bitty head.

However, when I saw that watery print fabric, seen on the skirt portion of the dress, I immediately thought of Monet's water lilies. Now, I picked up two yards of that fabric and the violet and chartreuse well over a year ago. It wasn't until the last couple of weeks, when I've had One Million Snow Days (have you noticed that One Million is a theme in this here post?) that I had time to dive in and start stitchin'. One of the reasons I hesitated for so long was cuz I knew I'd not only have to stitch up the dress but then do some needle felting after the fact. That's a whole lotta work and I'm a whole lotta lazy. But with endless hours of free time on my hands, I decided to jump right in.

By the way, I used that lovely vintage Butterick for the dress. The pattern was super simple, especially the bodice as it had raglan sleeves, my personal fave. I also thought the wrapped waistband was clever and fun.

Once the dress was created, I started sketching the water lilies in chalk and commenced needle felting. If you've no clue what needle felting is all about, might I suggest you take a visit here and here.

Because there was so much color in the ensemble, I decided not to go with Monet's pink water lilies but the white ones. I was particularly inspired by this lovely painting of his.

I found that needle felting was a great medium for recreating the same look and feel as Monet's works. Sadly, my style is much too tight. I wish I could better immolate the looseness of Monet's work. Although, wasn't dude like near blind when he was painting these works? Note to self: next time, take out contacts. Except I'm using a tool with three razor sharp serrated needles and I'm near blind. SoooooOOOooo scratch that.

Most frequently asked question about Needle Felting:

How do you wash your clothing?

I don't. Hence the smell.

Okay, so sometimes I do. Since it's wool, which shrinks when agitated (that's how you do wet felting. And why your 100% wool sweater shrunk in the wash), I wash by hand in cold water with Woolite.

I dunno if I was successful or not but what I was trying to do was not simply place one million water lilies all over the skirt portion but to create a composition. That's why I started with the one lone flower and lily off to the (viewer) right and gradually angled upward toward your left. Make sense? Can you tell I had a plan in mind? I dunno if it worked or not. I do know that I'm so over needle felting that Ima gonna pretend it's just right.

I love a good wide belt. I thought I'd give you a sneak peak at the side view and the back of this dress. I think that band is one of my fave things about this pattern. I can't decide if I love the neckline curve detail. It's kinda growing on me.

With the art teacherin' conference coming at the end of this month (OMG, so soon! Yikes! I've got four presentations that I'd love you to attend, y'all. More details on those dates and times coming soon. This blog post has enough going on already), I knew I'd wanna wear this dress. However, I'm kinda cold natured so I thought I'd want a jacket to go with this number.

In the "re-do me" portion of my closet (Yes there is such a thing. No, I never ever get rid of anything.), I found this Target jacket that I'd scooped up on super sale a while back. Like, I'm talking 4 years ago a while back. I'd never worn the the thing because it looked like this:

I loved the buttons, the gathered fabric at the collar and opening and those presh sleeves. I have ALWAYS HATED that length. Every time I put it on, I found it so unflattering. But the color matched my dress's bodice perfectly. So I decided to make a bolero outta the thing. (P.S. Welcome to my uber messy sewing room! There's so much fabric, books and crapola in that room that I'm just waiting for the day that the weight of all my stuff sends me crashing thru to the dining room).

Using a beautiful platter that a sweet teacher buddy bought for me (thank you, Heather!), I traced the curve of the plate. The other bolero I made had a similar curve to the edge and I really liked that. It was the inspiration for the bottom edge of this bad boy.

I absolutely LOVE short jackets because they look so vintage. And they still showcase your outfit underneath. So I was pretty stinkin' happy with how this simple lil alteration turned out.

And I totally dig it with my dress! It matches those shadows in the water lilies pretty well, says me. Ima totally gonna rock this out in New Orleans at the art teacherin' conference where I plan to hang with my brand new buddy...Tim Gunn!

So, sadly, I've been keeping secrets from you. A while back, I had the incredible opportunity to spend a lovely hour on the phone just chatting it up with the one and only Tim Gunn. I interviewed him for SchoolArts Magazine (thank you, Nancy Walkup!) and you can read the article here. There's actually much more to the interview so you can bet I'll be sharing the entire interview right here just for you very soon. I'm super excited to attend Tim's sessions at the conference. Ima be all like...

"Hey, Tim! 'Member me?" And y'all know dude's much to nice to say no. Let's just hope he doesn't secretly file for a restraining order. Again.

And das all, folks! A Monet's Water Lilies Dress and a Jacket Refurb.

By the way, if you need some AMAZING Monet art lessons, check out my buddy Laura's blog over at Painted Paper. So much Monet goodness, ya'll!

DIY: A Mondrian Moment in Dress and Shoes

Well, kids, today is one of those days that every teacher on the planet dreams of: A Snow Day! In Tennessee that means we scored a whooping 2" of ice pellets (which, as it turns out, sounds like someone is throwing rabbit pooh at your windows all day. Not my fave sound in the world). One of the best things to do on a Snow Day is turn it into Sew Day! And that's just what I did in finishing off this Mondrian Dress-terpiece.

The whole idea started when I saw this fabric and popped it into my virtual shopping cart faster than you can say, "OMG, don't you have enough fabric already?!" Answer, no. Also, if anyone ever says that to you they are: A. Being absurd. and B. Prolly your husband. So see A.

Once the fabric arrived, I set off to JoAnn's to pick up a new dress pattern. I've been using and reusing, like, the same 4 patterns and Ima starting to get a lil bored. Not that this here pattern is much of a stray from my norm. I'm all about the 1950's fitted bodice, flair skirt deal. 'Tis my fave.

I'm currently working on two other dresses from this pattern, each with a diff collar. I'm hoping to finish 'em off with tomorrow's snow day (yeppers, I scored a Snow Day Double Header, yee-haw!). I decided to go with the "stand collar" for this dress because I wanted it to have a 1960's feel. But more on that in uno momento.

Let's talk about Simplicity #2444 for a sec, kay? Do y'all sew? Personally, I love the Project Runway patterns because they come with a ton of options and are pretty stinkin' simple. Also, I secretly stalk Professor Pincushion who creates videos of many of the PR patterns and walks you through the entire dress-making process. Yes, you read that right. No, I'm not even kidding. She's totes stalker-worthy.

So, the stand collar. I know the fit and flair of this dress is mostly 1950's but I wanted a nod to the 60's. Mostly because this era of Mondrian's paintings have a super mod vibe to me. I'm happy with the collar, I think it gives this dress a bit more attitude than the no-collar version woulda had. Whatcha think?

So let's talk ole Mondrian for a moment, shall we? I'm gearing up to start a big fat hair Primary Colors unit with kindergarten and who better to showcase than this ole boy? What I was totes bummed to find is that there is, like, one kids book on Mondrian and I wasn't loving it. Do you all have any recommendations for me? I recall learning about Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43) in those dark and sleepy art history sessions in college. Please tell me I'm not the only one who always fell asleep and woke up with drool-soaked notes. How you gonna turn off the lights, talk in a monotone voice and not expect me to snore my way through your course?! I'm hoping to make Mondrian more 'citing for my kids.

As I was stitching up this dress, I got the idea to MOD-ify some booties (get it, MOD-ify 'em?! Sometimes my incredible sense of humor even leaves me in tears. Of sadness. That no one else is nearly as hysterically humorous as me. Ahem.) Mostly cuz I always thought that when I got around to Mondrianin' a dress (yes, now he's a verb) it would look like this 1965 Yves Saint Laurent number.

I love Yves Saint Laurent. He studied under The Greatest Designer of All Time: Christian Dior. Oh my goodness, don't even get me started on my love of Dior. It's borderline cray. But back to Laurent. This dress of his is so mod and so 1960's that I always thought it'd be the perfect thing to stitch up. The prob? I'm not a fan of the shift dress. I get it, it's comfy, it's classic. But it's just not my bag, baby. So some 1960's Mondrian-inspired booties would just have to do the trick.

Now, before I go too much further, lemme just throw in a disclaimer: I prolly shouldn't even be showing you this here DIY. Mostly cuz I just used whatever I had on hand: booties and acrylic paint. I hear they make paint specifically for leather. And I hear you should treat your leather before painting it. I learned all this after I started painting and decided to do a lil googling. Eh, says me. Too late now.

This truly was a simple and speedy DIY. Just mask off some geometric shapes and start a-painting. I used a coupla coats.

And allowed to dry before pealing off the tape. Some of the acrylic did come off with the tape (nice job, acrylic) so I did have to do some retouching but it really wasn't a biggie.