What the Art Teacher Wore #204

Hey there, friends! I come to you just as excited as this photo from Monday because...it's a three day weekend. Here's to staying in my pj's all weekend, watching The Office for the umpteenth time and working on all the projectzzzz. I hope you all are livin' it up and partyin' hard like me!

To kick off the week, I wore my needle felted Kandinsky inspired dress to inspire my third graders as they started painting their plates for our Circle Loom Weaving unit. I've got several weaving videos on my YouTube channel if you are interested in bringing fibers to your art room. Just search my playlist Fibers!

Many of my grades are kicking off the year with fiber arts projects like sewing, weaving and fiber applications. I'm so excited about that, here's just a peak. MANY more details to come, I pinkie swear! Of course, I share tons of sneak peeks here. 

 On Tuesday I got all set to teach some of my classes about landscapes. They are getting ready to do my Tree Weaving project which means they gotta paint a landscape first. 

 I was feeling all sorts of prepared. We partnered up and looked at the landscapes in those clear plastic sleeves. The kids had to work together to find the horizon line, the back-, middle- and foreground. It was a GREAT pre-assessment. Then we went over the vocabulary and corrected our mistakes. I chatted about scale, perspective and atmosphere. We were just getting ready to paint when the fire alarm went off.

C'est la vie. After being outside for 10 minutes, we were hot, bothered and not ready to paint. So with our short class, we each took our turn playing the Clean Up Drums instead. More on the Monet Dress here. 

Many years ago, my husband scored me a drum set for my art room. I haven't pulled it out of the storage closet in a couple of years...but decided to this year. It's our Clean Up Drums...an incentive for awesome behavior. One student is picked at the end of class to play a fill. I teach all the kids how to play a fill so that when it's their turn to play, they'll know. On our first intro do, we each get our chance to learn and play a fill...it's a lot of fun. 

 My fourth graders are gearing up to sew. Once class is stitching emoji pillows and they are SO EXCITED. I had to wear my needle felted emoji dress for the occasion. 

Teaching sewing means teaching good sewing habits. I created color coded sewing kits for each table. The kits include a color coded needle book (the felt piece with the button) and a color coded felt backed magnet for pins. I'll keep you posted on their progress!

 Another fourth grade class is stitching pizza pillows! So OF COURSE I managed to leave all of their supplies at home. SMH. They were great and the rolled with our alternative project instead...sewing next time!

Third graders from Monday had a bonus art class on our half day Friday. I was excited to see the patterns they added to their plates in just 30 minutes!

Since my younger students have really been focusing on line, I have been introducing them to the work of Kandinsky...which means I got to end my week on a Kandinsky note too. Hope y'all have a long and relaxing weekend! 

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DIY: Round Towel to Circle Skirt...with Pockets!

I think this summer may go down as the one I went to Walmart, LOST MY MIND, purchased all of their round beach towels and stitched them all into circle skirts.

And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Cuz now I'm the proud owner of an assortment of super absorbent, albeit VERY warm, food-tastic skirts. Perfect for all occasions. National Pizza, Donut, Watermelon, Kiwi, Orange and Hamburger Days. I should know cuz I've already marked my calendar. 

Because I know you will want to make your own, I've provided a handy tutorial. What this tute is missing is...pockets! 

That's right. After I made my pizza skirt, I realized that not having pockets was just THE WORST. What kind of monster makes a skirt without pockets? This one, apparently. I knew adding pockets to the last five skirts would add more time but, c'mon. Pockets are always worth it. 

After I made the pizza skirt and it was so simple, I literally hit Walmart and bought EVERY round towel they had. The lady at the check out counter asked me what I planned to do with so many towels. I was wearing my pizza skirt at the time and I said, "Look! I'm making them into skirts! This one was a towel too!" She just gave me the side-eye and was like, "oh, okay." She does work at Walmart tho...they see IT. ALL. 

Some towels translated to skirts better than others. Like this donut...I thought it would be my fave but it's not. 

 The orange one, however, makes me so happy. I didn't think much of it until I put it on. It's so cute!

The hamburger one...well, I'm still on the fence about it. It's wacky tho and that I can totally deal with. 

In other news, GUESS WHO HAS BEEN BANNED FROM THE ROUND TOWEL AISLE AT WALMART?! If you see any cute ones, pick 'em up for me, would ya?! 

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DIY: National Donut Day Dress, Part 1

Happy National Donut Day! Earlier this week, when I discovered that Donut Day was approaching, I decided it was just the deadline I needed to sew up not one but TWO donut themed dresses. So, there will be not one but TWO Donut Dress posts on this here blog. Do'not even act like you are surprised. This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands! 

 For National Donut Day, Krispie Kreme is giving out one free donut! How super amazing is that. And those folks were working hard at the Kreme when I popped by there today. It was a madhouse! Who knew that folks would go so nuts over donuts?! 

 I've had this fabric in my stash forever...so long that all I can tell you is that I scored it from the thrift store years ago. I decided to pair the small print with a bid and bold polka dot. Two days ago, I started cutting into the fabric...well, the best I could...

 Every time I do, I gotta contend with this. WHY IS THIS A THING, CAT PEOPLE?! The moment she hears that tissue paper on the floor, she comes a running and a sitting. It's hilarious. 

 I decided to do the same dress pattern mashup as I used on this pencil dress but decided to ditch the button. 

 The red dotted fabric was leftover from my superhero dress. This means I actually used fabric already in my stash for this dress...that never happens! 

I have decided that there are three things I hate the most about sewing: 

1. PUTTING IN A SLEEVE. Ugh, I get stabbed at least 50,000 times but the needles holding the sleeve in place as I struggle to get it around the machine. Someone come teach me a magical sleeve sewing trick!

2. HEMMING A CIRCLE SKIRT. Thankfully, I didn't have to do that here. Because I literally feel like I'm pinning and sewing a circle skirt for DAYS...but they are my favorite!

3. PUTTING IN A ZIPPER. It's not that it's hard to put in a zip...it's just that it's usually the final step and it's at the point in dress-making where I just WANNA BE DONE and NEVER SEW AGAIN. So my patience is pretty much extinct. 

 But then I wear the dress and feel all proud and start thinking of the next dress Ima bout to hate making. 

 Look, maw! Matched up backside! 

 Also, POCKETS. All my dresses have them. It's mandatory. 

Stay tuned! I'll have another Donut Dress to share with y'all super soon!

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In the Art Room: 2017-18 Art Show, 3D Displays Part 3

Here is the final installment of the 3D tour of our art show. Our school-wide art show features every work of art created by every student. The halls are filled with your 2D pieces (future blog posts on those displays!) while the art room showcases our 3D creations. You can see Part 1 and Part 2 of our art show tour of 3D works. Our art show was Superhero themed (tho you'd never know it by this display) and the kiddos were asked to dress the part. You can read more about that here. 

 My fourth graders stitched up these massive Pizza Pillows this spring and I knew I wanted a fun display for them. I had thought about creating oversized pizza boxes to put them in like we did with these clay pizzas created a couple years ago.

While they look cool, they only are impactful if you are standing right over them. So I got this idea to create a Pie in the Sky display!

I started by painting and hanging one paper panel and pizzas in front of it, just to see how it looked. I immediately loved it and decided to make the whole display this way. 

If you are interested in more details about this project, here's the video I created last summer. In this video, I am creating a variety of pizza plushies. However, for my kiddos, we went bigger. That's really the only difference.

Complete lesson here and here. 

Here's a terrible picture of how I hung the paper. I put a strip of masking tape across the back. Then I created a tab of masking tape by folding a piece of tape in half. From there I used two paperclips linked together. One went thru the tape tab and the other was stabbed into the ceiling tile. 

 To hang the pizzas, I simply used fishing line. I fed the line thru the pizza and hung it also with linked paperclips. To prevent the pizzas from twirling in the wind, I made sure they butted up against the paper so they would not rotate. 

This was definitely a show stopper...and the younger kids were all asking "when are we making THOSE?!" That's when you you know you got a winner!

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DIY: Yarn Bombing in the Art Room

If you follow me on Instagram, then you know that last Wednesday, I had the chance to attend an amazingly fun PD lead by an art teacherin' buddy in my district. Her name is Madison and she shared with us all about yarn bombing! We watched this TED talk about Magda Sayeg who is attributed to "inventing" yarn bombing. It was fun to learn a little about the history of this street art movement.  

Yarn bombed things are usually knitted items...at least that's how Magda began the movement. What I loved about Magda's talk is how she never thought of herself as an "artist" per se...but found herself in the middle of an artist movement. Yarn bombed items since have been knitted, crocheted and wrapped...which is what we did. Madison asked that we bring something to wrap. It just so happened that I'd picked up this heart the day before at the Dollar Tree. I didn't even know that I needed it...but when she mentioned bringing something I realized the benefits of being a shopaholic. Here's a video of how I created this heart:

Of course I had to get a little bit tricky with the needle and all...but this heart would have looked just as cute without going that extra step.

The best part about this project is using up random yarn. I always get a TON of yarn donated to the art room. Oftentimes, it's not enough for a project...so it just sits unused. Now I can add it to an Early Finishers center of objects to be yarn bombed! But more on that in a moment.

Lemme just say that yarn bombing, while easy, is a pinch time consuming. Especially if you go the fancy route with sewing in the yarn like I did. The crazy thing is, I bought SEVEN more of these hearts on my last run to the Dollar Tree...I wanna create a whole wall of these lovely hearts!

Cuz I have just a pinch more wall space left in the art room for that sort of thing. Ahem

So, let's talk Early Finishers. Ya'll know that's been my thing this school year...trying to conquer the Early Finisher Beast. I'm trying to add more and more to my early finishers rooster...to allow more open-ended choice in my art room. I'm currently trying to wrap my head around my fibers area...I think yarn bombing would be just thing thing. Add a basket of yarn, some mundane objects that need a little yarn-love and viola! Yarn Bombing!

 I know it worked beautifully for me when I was avoiding lesson planning on a recent PD day. A few minutes between lessons and my class broom went from Blah to OHHH-LAAA-LAAA.

I had so much fun yarn bombing my broom that I realized the kids would surely enjoy it just as much. And I could use up those small amounts of yarn that seem to be multiplying in my storage closet (is that why I keep hearing Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On coming from my closet?!).

 Have you kids yarn bombed before? So, what gives? Do you love it as much as me?!

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