Superhero Week: Super Pop-Up Card!

Wow! The artists who joined me live yesterday really had a lot of fun with this one: a Super Pop-Up Card! If you've not made a pop-up card before, you really outta give this simple project a shot. Here's the list of supplies you'll need:

You'll need two pieces of paper, one for the card and the other for your buildings and superhero. And here's how you can create your own card:

The possibilities of what you can create with this simple pop-up concept are limitless! If you want to join us today, here's what you might want to have on hand:

You can watch LIVE today (and every weekday) on my Facebook or my Instagram. You can also watch all videos the next day on my YouTube channel. New videos are up all the time so you might want to be sure to subscribe! 

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Pirate Week: Alligator Puppet and a Weekly Wrap Up!

Wow! I don't know about you, but Pirate Week was an absolute blast! So many of you joined the fun that I loved seeing photos of you and your children creating along with me. It means the world to me. Thank you so much for sharing! In case you missed out on making your own Alligator Puppet, here's the list of supplies you'll need:

And here's the how-to video:

In case you missed any of our Pirate Week adventures, I thought I'd do a recap of all of our projects here! I'll be sharing the videos here but if you want a list of supplies, you can check out this blog post.

There's what we created on Thursday...a crowd favorite: Treasure Maps!

I brought back the Salt Dough Clay recipe because it was such a hit during Zany Scientist Week. With it, we created the details on our Treasure Chest!

We constructed a Pirate Ship Collage with materials found around the home:

And we even drew ourselves as pirates when we created this Wanted Pirate Poster!

I'll be going LIVE again this week for...Superhero Week! Stay tuned for the projects I have lined up for us, I'll be posting later on today. You can catch me LIVE here on Facebook or on Instagram. You can also catch me later on my YouTube channel.

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Pirate Week: Treasure Maps

Yesterday was so much fun on our Pirate Week adventure as we created Hidden Treasure Maps!

 The Art Class with Cassie kids really seemed to love this one as I got so many emails and messages of kids and their maps. They arrrrrre rockin' Pirate Week! In case you missed it, no worries, here is the list of supplies we used:

Today is our last day of Pirate Week! I cannot even believe it, where did the time go? Today we'll be making a puppet version of our very favorite friend, Allie Gator! You've seen him all week, now let's try our hand at making our own. Here are the supplies:

If you wish to join me LIVE you can do so on my Facebook page or my Instagram. And if you miss, don't worry! All videos go to my YouTube channel the following day. Be sure and subscribe because new videos are dropped almost daily! See you soon. 

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Pirate Week!

I hope you Pirates are as excited as I am about Pirate Week! We are going into our third week of themed home-based creating and I am loving it! In case you missed, we've done Robot Week and Zany Scientist Week. All of those videos you can now catch on my YouTube channel. More are added all the time so I would encourage you to subscribe! 

Once again, we are keeping the supplies simple. Most days we are just using household items. So that you can scavenge around for them like a true pirate, I'm including the list of supplies for each day this week! 

When I go LIVE, I do so on Facebook and Instagram. You can find me there, each weekday at 11am CT. 

If you know of ANYONE who would like to join, please know that this is absolutely free. Anyone is able to be apart of the creatin' fun. Art teachers, feel free to add this to your list of creative activities your students can do at home. Our kids are currently left with a lot of time on their hands. Let's fill their days with a bit of normalcy and FUN! Thank you SO MUCH for continuing to get the word out, it means the world to me and our creative kiddos. 

On Monday, we'll be drawing Wanted Pirate Posters! To get those creative juices flowing, I created not one but TWO coloring sheets! You can find them here and here. 

Just for fun, I created these What's Your Pirate Name sheets. You can use these any ole time but we'll definitely be taking a look at them on Monday! Of course, coming up with your own name is most of the fun!

Tuesday's activity is going to be all about recycling as we use a toilet paper tube and a cereal box as our main creating source!

Last week, making our own clay was a HUGE hit! If you want to make your clay in advance or find out more, just hop over here! 

The most fun in making your own treasure map is making it look old when you are finished. For that you can use a cup of coffee or tea. I used my cold cup of morning coffee and it worked great. 

I love making puppets, they are so much fun. And this one is a simple puppet that can actually be transformed into so many things. We'll be making a Crocodile Puppet with ours!

And here's the daily lineup! I hope to see you there. 

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Toilet Paper Tube Crafts!

Today I thought I'd share some of my favorite lessons and projects created with the lowly toilet paper tube! I'll share the link to each of these projects so you can learn more details so be sure and click if you have more questions. If it's one thing we all probably have plenty of right now...it's TP tubes! 

I did this project with my...FIRST GRADERS, y'all! And they knocked it out in just two thirty minute art classes. Here's the video:

I'm guessing most of you don't have plaster strips at home. I know I don't! An easy papier mache recipe would be just a mixture of flour and water. Dip strips of torn newspaper into the mixture and use that as your plaster. The mixture should have a paste-like consistency. No measurements required!

Did you know you can make a castle with toilet paper tubes? My fourth graders created these beauties one year and loved it! All the lesson details here. 

What the world needs now is LOVE LOVE LOVE! You can create all kinds of prints with a toilet paper tube but printing hearts is probably my favorite. You can learn more about it here as well as some fun guided drawing projects! 

Got paper towel tubes? Well, you can make crayons too! Here's how the armature was created:

And if you have cereal boxes, you could even make some decor for your art room!

I have these hanging in my art room and my kids love them. I added a little spot of velcro to the backs of the crayons so they could be removed and shared with my students.

Last year we had an INSANE Pirate Art Show (like, it was the coolest thing ever, I'm not even gonna try to be humble about it. The kids ROCKED it). One of the projects we did was make pirate ships with toilet paper tube sails. Kids could create the ships with air dry, homemade or even modeling clay! A straw and tubes were added for the sails. Here's more of our art show. 

Want a seriously simple TP craft? Well, check this one out:

I also did this project with my students and it was a hit! Here's the demo video:

And here's what my students created:

 This was apart of a collection of handmade art supplies from our art show a couple of years ago. Here's a tour:

We even made "glue sticks" from toilet paper tubes! 

I hope that gives you some fun ideas for creating with TP tubes! Have fun, y'all!

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2019 Art Show: The Pirate Gallery!

Now that the art show dust has settled and I'm able to have my life back (like I have much of one in the first place), I thought I'd share our art show with you! I've been giving a ton of sneak peaks over on my Instagram...but have not really given a proper tour. So, let's get started! I created a video tour of the portion of the art show...I hope you enjoy it!

I know the video tends to sweep over the projects and displays so I thought I'd share an overabundance of photos here. Sorry not sorry, y'all. This show was epic!

The theme of our art show was Pirates! That's right, we had a Pirate Art Show and it was easily the biggest and bestest one yet. I cannot wait to share with you all of the details that went into this show...but there is so much that I'm going to spread them over the course of several blog posts. To summarize, our art show was a showcase of three galleries: The Pirate Art Gallery (which I'll be featuring in this blog post), The Glow Gallery (our first black light gallery that was a HUGE hit!) and our Grade Level Galleries which feature every work of art that the kids have created all year long. 

My art room, shown here, was the Pirate Gallery. Each year, I use my art room as a gallery to feature our 3-D projects. You can see what last year's Super Hero themed gallery looked like here, here and here. 

This display is one that was seen upon entering my art room. Normally, this area is used as our "early finisher" area with a foam rug and lots of building activities such as blocks and sculpture toys. About a month before the art show, I packed up the carpet and started prepping displays in that area. This first display showcases the work by all of my fourth graders and two classes of my first grade. 

My fourth graders created these Coral Reel Relief projects from kiln fire clay. This was a one hour clay project that they totally rocked. I've not had a chance to share the lesson details or a video with you but hope to very soon. Instead of glazing these, I decided to have the kids use metallic craft store paint. I started by dunking the bisque fired pieces in diluted India ink (any brand works great) and having the kids paint them with inexpensive craft store paints. The results were so pretty!

 I cannot wait to share this lesson with you!

Mixed amongst the fourth grade pieces were the first grade fish! You can find the clay lesson for the fish here, complete with video. While our theme was pirates, I also added a lot of ocean life projects too. 

The fish were glazed and had to be fired on metal stilts as they were glazed on both sides. The base was dunked in diluted sand-colored paint and the kids painted the bases with the same metallic paints as the fourth grade pieces. Then I had the pleasure of gluing together with a hot glue gun and a chopstick!

At the bottom of the table are the fourth grader's Pirate Ships in a Bottle...another lesson I'm excited to share with you soon. More closer photos in a moment...but let's move on from here and over to the next couple of displays. 

I created these giant banners a month before the art show. I plan to tell you how but here's a little secret: they were easier than they look. In a future post, I'll also share how I hung these to the wall. This was a great way to add more excitement to the pirate art show AND hide that big mess of an art room behind it. 

Under the treasure chest banner was a display of my second grader's treasure chests! This project was easily everyone's favorite and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. These second graders were STOKED to take these home.

The treasure chests were created from boxes covered in plaster and decorated with Model Magic details. We even created "gold" coins from scraps of cay and metallic paint. Each student got a "loot bag" that I stamped with a Jolly Rodger. I just happened to have a bunch of draw string bags in my stash so that worked out perfectly.

My third graders created two clay projects, one of them being these pirate ships!

 The ship lesson is actually one adapted from my clay book! You can scoop up my clay book here...it's written for kids who don't have access to a kiln. So if you are a kilnless art teacher, this book is for you! BUT many of the lessons can also be used for kiln fired clay. So it's an equal opportunity book. 

 The ships were also dunked in a terra cotta colored paint and sparkle was added with metallic. 

Sails were created from...can you guess? Toilet paper tubes! The kids had to hole punch through the tube to slide the straw down. I had a stash of paper straws in my closet for us to use. I did have to hot glue the sails in place which didn't take too long. 

Around the corner from the other displays was this one. This display featured the work of my second and third graders. 

My second graders, in addition to creating their treasure box sculptures, they also made these Pirate Parrots! These are pinch pot birds with fun dangly legs. 

Some had made their parrots with eye patches, pirate hats, you name it. Each had a wonderfully fun personality, just like the artist!

 Third grade, in addition to their pirate ships, they also made these coral reef relief. 

 These were created similarly to the fourth graders pieces but on a smaller scale. They were also painted in the same manner. 

When finished painting, the kids used Twisteez wire and beads to create a hanger for their piece.  

Around the corner, we had more second grade treasure chests, more first grade fish and more third grade pirate ships.

 Fourth grade also created these ships in a bottle which were a lot of fun. We used cardboard recycled from the cafeteria, painted papers and Model Magic for the boats. More lesson details to come!

 This project was a big hit with the kids!

 A lesson that I'd definitely do again. 

To display, I simply hot glued them to the bottom of the paper table cloth.

The last displays I'm sharing featured the work of my kindergarten, more treasure chests by second grade, more pirate parrots by second and some fish by first. 

My kindergarten actually created two clay projects...one was displayed in the glow gallery and I'll be sharing that in a future blog post. 

 This is a clay project from my book also! I've been doing it for years with my kindergarten kiddos and it is ALWAYS a success for each child. Gotta love that!

 Thank you for joining me on this tour of the pirate art gallery! Be sure and pop by at the end of this week...more videos and tours to come!

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