Let's Make a Star Pop-Up!

Need a fun project for Mother's Day or any day? For this Glow Gallery star project, I'm using supplies by Pacon. You can shop their entire glow store here for all of your glow art show needs! I am using their Pacon paper and their Creativity Street Tempera Sticks. You can check out the video here:

I did this project years ago as a sub plan, if you can believe that! Here is what we created then and the supplies we used:

You can see more about this project in this blog post. Also, here is the video for this lesson:

Have fun!

Snack-tastic Chefs Week!

Who is ready for another week of art-making! I'm pretty stoked about this week as it is based on my favorite thing: snacks! And, despite the fact that I'm not such a great chef myself (have you even seen Season 3, Episode 3 of Nailed It!?), we are going to be BAKING COOKIES on Friday! Which is all kinds of funny as the judges spit out my cookie that I made on T.V. Let's just hope y'all don't do the same. 

So get read for another fun week and be sure and share this with friends and family so they can join the fun too. We'll kick things off with a Chef Selfie!

On Tuesday, I'll be sharing a lot of paper folding and paper sculpture techniques in this Hamburger Sculpture project. 

 On Wednesday, let's make a Salt Dough Pizza! 

On Thursday, I'll show you how to draw a 3-D cake! It's a piece of cake! 

And on Friday, we are gonna bake! I'm so excited about this!

To join me live, you can find me on my Instagram and my Facebook page. If you miss the LIVE session, no worries. You can catch the video the next day on my YouTube channel! Be sure and subscribe. I'll be sharing lessons there (in addition to these) all week for Mother's Day! 

See you real soon!

Earth Day Art Lessons: Earth Without Art Poster!

Ending this week of Earth Day Art Lessons with this Earth Without Art Poster! In this short video, I'll show you how to draw your palette earth and do this fun printing technique! Here are the supplies you'll need:

For Drawing: 
* Paper
* Permanent Marker

For Coloring:
* Crayons

For Printing:
* Foil
* Markers
* Damp Sponge

When you get ready to print, it's important to make sure your paper is pretty damp. If it is too dry, it will not pull the marker from the foil. However, you can just try it again! Redampen your paper and print the foil once more. If you don't have a sponge, a spray bottle of water works great too. Have fun!

Earth Day Art Lessons: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle Poster!

We may have officially celebrated Earth Day yesterday but that doesn't mean we can't keep creating...and reminding our friends and family to Reuse, Reduce and Recycle! Let me show you how to make paint with just markers and a pop-up with just paper. Grab some paper, markers, a permanent marker, water and a paintbrush as well as scissors and glue and let's get creating! 

How to Draw a Unicorn!

Happy National Unicorn Day! To celebrate, I created a short 3 minute video that will show you how to draw your very own unicorn! Have fun and enjoy:

All you need is paper, markers and crayons but really any art supply will do. 

And now a flashback to last year when my kindergarten and I celebrated Unicorn Day complete with our friend Uni the Unicorn. Happy Thursday!

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!

Robot Week! Home-Based Art Making

Knowing that so many of us are teaching and creating remotely, I thought it would be fun to do a little art teacherin' online. I shared yesterday all of the resources of mine that are free and able for you to use if you need to prepare art lessons for at home artists. However, I wanted to create something fresh and new and do a little LIVE art teaching as well. So...here's what I came up with: Robot Week!

What's Robot Week? Well, it will be a daily dose of creating centered around the theme of Robots. I'll kick it off on Monday this this lesson that I'll be doing LIVE but I will also attempt to archive to my YouTube channel. 

 For this first LIVE, I'll probably go for about 30-45 minutes. We'll just play it by ear. If you and your young artists can make it, great! 
You can join me on my Facebook page here or on my Instagram here!

Big thanks to our sponsor Dixon Ticonderoga for joining the fun!

Free How to draw Robots resource for you! To practice, inspire or color! 

 In my art room, we call these Idea Sheets. This one is yours here!

Mitch said I should make y'all a coloring sheet...so here you go! 

On Tuesday, I won't be live but I will be posting a video on how to create robots that look more three-dimensional on my YouTube channel! Again, simple supplies can be used or swapped out for whatever you have on hand. 

I am super stoked about this one, stay tuned!

I know we probably all have a couple of cereal or snack boxes laying around. For that reason, why not try your hand at a collagraph rubbing? It's when you cut and glue shapes to a surface, lay a piece of paper on top and then, using a "sleeping" crayon (one on its side), rub over your design. I then added a watercolor wash to some of mine! 

It's a Build-Your-Own-Bot kind of Wednesday!

What to do with that cereal box collage? Well, on Thursday, I'll show you how to cover it in foil and make a print with just markers and water!

Oh yeah, this one's magical!

On the final day of Robot Week, we'll make a collage with one of my favorite papers to collage with: business envelopes! They have the coolest patterns and designs. 

I do hope you'll join the fun! If you do, I would love to see what you and your awesome artists create. You can email me your images at artteacherin101@gmail.com and I'll try to feature them right here!

My Favorite Lessons for Home-Based Art Education!

Hey, y'all! I'm about to share some of my fave home-based learning projects but...this is just the tip of the iceberg! I have a TON of art lesssons on my YouTube channel for you and your artists to explore. Be sure and subscribe as I'll be adding many more!

Currently, we as educators find ourselves in the most unusual of situations: away from our students for an unforeseeable amount of time and wanting to still connect, teach and create. If you are like me then your district has requested that you attempt to do just that with home-based learning. Because this is unchartered territory, the idea of teaching remotely is confusing, daunting and overwhelming. Where to even start? 

I've been putting some serious thought into this topic for the last couple of days as I create fun art activities for my students to do at home. I'll be sharing them all right here (for free, of course!) but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you the home-based art lessons I plan to use. Each of these lessons, videos and PDFs are FREE for you and your students can use right now. Feel free to include in your take-home packets or modify to fit your student's needs. Let's begin with this Monochromatic Self-Portrait lesson that is appropriate for kindergarten on up!

Just click for the video! Because many students may not have markers at home, you might suggest crayons for them to add color. 

This Colorful Village lesson was one that all of my students loved! I did it with my first through fourth graders and it was a huge hit. In case students don't have paint at home, markers and crayons can be used. Without those supplies, this could simply be a great drawing task for them to work on creating three-dimensional buildings. Here's the video:

These colorful houses were so fun to create!

My fourth graders always loved this Romero Britto-inspired self-portrait project. I do think that younger children would love it too. 

Again, consider suggesting students swap out supplies used for what they have on hand at home.

Chris Uphues is easily my student's favorite artist! And can you blame them for loving him so much, his work is just so full of joy! You can check out the entire lesson here. 

The link to this blog post also includes free downloadable PDFs!

Introduce your students to both James Rizzi and Vincent van Gogh with this fun lesson. Click the link for free handouts! Here's the video:

Of course, if you want to get kids creating, then you could always have them create their own sketchbook! I plan to create a video to show kids how to create one easily. In the meantime, they could use the Sketchbook Decoder Sheets found here to personalize their sketchbooks! 

If these look kinda familiar, we have done a similar project with my Getting to Know You sculptures. That project is also one that could be done at home with improvised materials!

Times like these could get you down...but we can't let it! So why not have students create drawings of people, places and things that they are grateful for? Click here for two free PDFs!

If you are required to send home a packet as we were in my district, you might consider downloading and printing out this sheet and including a circle sticker. These can be found at the dollar store. Children could access a telling of The Dot on YouTube and create their own work of art in the frame!

If your students have access to paper, scissors and glue, this easy Greg Mike-inspired project would be a blast for them! 

Without access to construction paper, students could simply use the paper that they have on hand.

A lesson that is always a hit with my students is making this pop-out star. They love creating the patterns and then writing about themselves. Again, think of an alternative set of supplies for students to use so they can create at home.

Alright, y'all! Stay tuned as I have much more to come. I hope that gives you and all the young artists out there a fun place to start!