What the Art Teacher Wore #165

 Manic Monday: Having just returned from Art Scouts, I realized that I'd not taken any time to add flowers to our front yard or steps. Now, here in Tennessee, it starts getting HAWWWT before the sun even rises which means you gotta get your weed-pullin'/flower-plantin' game on early. On this day, I'd hit the garden center, mowed the lawn and stuck stuff in the ground all before 10 am. There might have been a nap or two in the afternoon. dress: thrifted, vintage; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; shoes: Converse; box purse: Enid Collins, my favorite

Wowza, where did this week go? Summer needs to slow it's roll because when June ends and July steps in, I get that Sunday-Night Blues feeling. We head back to school on Auggie 1st so July is just the beginning of the end. I still have end-of-the-school-year cleaning to do, y'all. Ima gonna say that is NOT going to happen any time soon.

In other news, I finished the last of the 52 Clay Labs I've been working on for the book I'm writing. THAT was a good feeling. When I was first approached with this project, I felt certain I could never come up with that many ideas for no-kiln clay projects. In the end, I had a surplus of ideas but was more than happy to stop at 52 (like, seriously. SO happy). It's gonna be a long while before a hard copy becomes a reality, but until then, the hard part is oooo-ver.

This coming week is full of work. I've got a deck to power wash and stain, some redecorating I want to do and a couple of fun new projects in the works (I'll keep you posted). Working on the book made it so the DIY action on this here blog suffered a bit. I'm so happy to bring that back. You don't know how many times I've just stood in my sewing room, looked around and uttered the words, "I miss yooooooou, Sewing Room." I'll be so happy to get back in there.

What are your plans this week?

 We all have our favorite things. One of mine happens to be Enid Collins box purses. Made in the late 60's, they make me go weak in the knees. Finding these lovelies isn't all that hard as etsy and ebay are fully loaded. But the prices, THE PRICES, are just plain crazy. My days of finding these in the wild (aka the thrift store) are officially over. What do y'all collect?

 Summer Storm Tuesday: I do love me a good ole spooky summer storm. You know the kind: sunny and bright one minute then black as night with claps of thunder the next. Getting caught in it is the worst but from the comfort of home with a cat on your lap, it's pretty cozy. dress: vintage

 If you follow me in Instagram, then you know the next Art Scouts is coming soon to beautiful Tennessee! Jen and I spent some time preparing for our awesome Scouts and painting a backdrop. We are thrilled with how it is turning out, can't wait to share it with you!

 Getting in the Mood Wednesday: At the end of July, my buddy Laura Lohmann and I will be heading to sunny SoCal to work alongside our good friend Patty Palmer at her Summer Art Workshop! We are so excited. Our theme is Mexican art so, to get in the spirit of things, I wore my fave embroidered top. top: Buffalo Exchange; skirt: gift from a friend (thanks, Bethany!); belt: Amazon; shoes: Minnetonka; purse and necklace: vintage, thrifted

 The colors and design are so beautiful and sweet. I want to paint this on the front of our house! Pretty sure our HOA would frown on that tho. Party poppers. 

 Life is Short, Wear the Prom Dress: When I scored this dress at Buffalo Exchange a while back, I was like, "I'm NEVER going to have a place to wear this!" but it was just too pretty to leave behind. When I spotted it in my closet on Thursday, I just thought, eh, why not? To keep it casual, I paired it with my chucks and went about my errand running. I heard so many sweet compliments from all walks of life about this dress! So, note to self: ALWAYS wear the prom dress. 

 So, last night at 11:47pm, I wrote up the last Lab for the Clay Lab book. This photo was from a couple days prior when I was still testing recipes (and failing, obviously). I'm not a chef by any stretch so me making clay is rather comical.

Summer Movie Date: One of our fave things to do during the summer is hit the early show at the movies and grab dinner out. However, there ain't been much at the movies lately! We went to see The Conjuring 2 which had some great scares (just watching the big dude in front of me practically leap out of his chair at one scare was worth the price of admission). Have y'all seen any good movies this summer? Love a recommendation! dress: old, Forever 21; necklace: gift from a friend (thanks, Tamara!), Anthro

Art Teacherin' 101: Episode 7

So, it's that time of year: End of the School Year De-Clutterin' Season. I thought it might be fun to chat about what items we should save and which we should trash in a lil something I like to call...HOARD IT OR HURL IT?!

Surprisingly, being the well-established hoarder that I am, I'm not opposed to hurling a thing or two. I know I just barely scraped the surface of all the stuff we art teacherin' types acquire. I'd LOVE to hear what you hoard...and what oddities you've been "gifted" that you had to quietly hurl. In fact, just this weekend, an art teacherin' friend told me she was once given styrofoam meat trays for printmaking...that hadn't quite been cleaned completely (that's a LITERAL hurl, y'all). 

So...what's in your closet?

I admit: my closet is kinda like the George Costanza wallet. It has pretty much everything even a hack MacGyver would need to weasel out of any situation. A box full of baby doll heads? Got it. A sack stuffed with Santa Claus beards? You betcha. I ain't proud. I'm just sayin'. 

I try not to open any of my closets in front of my students because it usually just ends up looking like this. It's like I'm opening a portal to Narnia if the Snow Queen was a feature on Hoarders and Narnia was chock full of crap. 

I've always thought: I CAN have all of my crap and much, MUCH more if I just have a place for it. So, once every 7 years, I go completely bananaz and organize, label and tidy everything. But then Fur Realz Cassie returns and messes everything back up again. I'll never be the Mary Poppins of Tidy-Town.

For me, I'll either need to get me a smoke screen like that one (um, genius!) or precede to HURL IT! It's on my summery to do. But so is spending countless hours in pajama-land and it looks like I'm pretty booked solid with that. 

So, whatcha got? And are you gonna Hoard It or Hurl It?

Art Scouts, Ohio Camp 2016

This weekend, I was a very lucky girl. Not only did I have the chance to spend time with my very favorite art teacherin' friends, Ginger, Laura and Jennifer,  but I also had the opportunity to work alongside them and share our passion: making the teaching of art good ole messy fun! We were super fortunate that so many art teachers decided to join us on this journey for the first ever...

That's right, Art Scouts! On the beautiful campus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, we met and grew to love some of the nicest, brightest and just plain hilarious art teachers in the world. And I really do mean the whole world as we had friends traveling as far away as Seoul, South Korea, Canada and all corners of the U.S. to grace us with their awesome presence. 

Now we'd warned our Scouts ahead of time that earning those badges wasn't going to be easy (and, yes, in case you are wondering, they did receive super cute badges!). But each and every one of them rose to the challenge...although I do believe Jennifer made mention that "there is no crying in Art Scouts!" once or thrice. 

Speaking of Jennifer, she and I spent two days together sharing just about as much fiber arts and printmaking practices that we could. In preparation, we decked out the tables with all of the goodies our artist friends were to use in their art makerin'. Our fabulous sponsors, listed below, provided some of the supplies our Scouts used to create.

Because we'll be hosting another Scouts in less than a month in beautiful downtown Franklin, Tennessee, you won't find too many spoilers as to what skills the Scouts mastered. Sorry, friends! Badges were earned with blood (like, literally, right Lee Darter?!), sweat (woven sweat bands are on their horizon, y'all) and tears. Oh, wait! Jen said no crying in Art Scouts! Scratch that last one.

What I will say is that we were elbows deep in good ole messy art making fun. As it should be at a professional development, say we Scouts. While working with Jennifer, our Scouts had the opportunity to meet one of the most kind-hearted and loving art teachers. When Jen speaks about her students, you can hear the love she has for them. She reminded us all what precious gifts they are and how fortunate we are to create with them each and every day. She has a true gift of bringing out the most colorful and creative works of art in her students. Her secrets, tips and tricks were shared with the Scouts.  

We were so fortunate to work with some of our favorite brands and companies. This allowed us to share the supplies that we use with our students in our own art rooms. 

During our two day session, our Scouts hung with Jen and I before flipping to hang out with Ginger and Laura for their clay and painting badges. We all had so much to share with our Scouts that it was crunch time the whole time. 

Case in point: the "Working Lunch" written on our schedule. We left that "optional" but all of our Scouts were game to keep on Scoutin'! Don't worry, none of them earned the Starving Artist badge as we were feed very well with catered Mediterranean and gourmet lunches. Oh, and cookies. Warm, fresh outta the oven cookies, y'all. 

The amount of projects our Scouts accomplished will easily carry them through the middle of their school year, at the very least. Because our Scouts teach such a wide age range of students, adaptations were provided to either enhance or scale back lessons.  

Y'all know fibers is my jam, I could talk about that for days!

Just next door, the Scouts were hanging with Ginger and Laura earning their clay and painting badges. We knew they were having a blast because of the wild eruptions of laughter coming from their room. Ginger is our resident Zen mama with her calm, cool and reflective approach to teaching and creating art. On the flip side, Laura is a wild card who keeps us on our toes and rolling in laughs. A good mix, just as troop leaders should be!

Their tables were set with their clay and painting tools of mass creation.

Not only do our scouts have a wide age range but we all come from different situations: cart or classroom; no budget or big budget (wait, WHO HAS THAT?!). Working with clay can be tricky in certain situations but Ginger made sure to provide ceramic clay alternatives.

If you follow her blog, then you know she also creates beautiful murals with her students. The goPro videos of her students working on those murals are truly amazing! Our Scouts had the opportunity to paint a mural that was later used as our Photo Booth backdrop under her guidance.

Laura Lohmann is the Painted Paper Queen! Long before I knew her personally, I'd followed her blog and tried to emulate her painted paper techniques. But, I gotta tell ya, there is NOTHING like learning from the master. She shared her tips and tricks with our Scouts and the projects they created were out of this world. 

But catching her in a rare moment of seriousness is like snapping a photo of Loch Ness, a near impossibility! 

Now, just like any good camp, there were shenanigans aplenty! My Instagram, Twitter and Facebook feed were flooded with some of the funniest and most colorful characters I've seen. 

 Our Scouts truly are the best art teacherin' folks!

I mean, who else would take time out of their summer (or school year, some of them still have WEEKS to go!) to attend a professional development? The dedicated, awesome and fabulous teachers you see here.

 Okay, just a coupla spoilers from social media land...

I truly miss all of our Scouts already! It was like going away to camp.

At the end of our last day, we snapped a ton of photos, shared a lot of hugs and stories. 

We gave away door prizes that were generously donated to our Scouts.

Said our Art Scout Oath, lead by Troop Leader Lohmann.

And maybe shed a couple of good bye tears. So, yes, in the end, there was crying in Art Scouts...but they were happy tears. 

Special thanks to ALL OF OUR SCOUTS for making our weekend such a wonderful one! We loved having each and every one of you and can't wait to see you again!

BIG THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! Here is a list of who provided some of our supplies that helped make our creating possible. We'd also like to give a virtual high five to Artome for providing everyone with a frame and snacks; the Art of Ed for fabulous swag, door prizes and snacks as well as Square One Art. We have been so fortunate for the Scouts to have such support. 

And, of course, last but definitely not least, we would like to thank BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY and (from left to right) Barb, Jordan, Beth, Sara and Tina for being so very fabulous! They made us feel warm and welcome, catered to our every need (as well as our Scouts) and were just the hostesses with the mostesses. We appreciate your hospitality and dedication to the field of art education!

And that's a wrap on Art Scouts at the Ohio Camp, 2016. We are so excited for our Tennessee Camp coming up soon! To keep up with all Art Scouts happenings, follow Scouts on Facebook and Instagram. Until then, happy creating!

Art Teacherin' 101: Episode 6

In last week's episode of Art Teacherin' 101, I shared with y'all what art supplies I order each year. I briefly mentioned glue bottles and my distaste for them (in fact, I do believe my words where "glue bottles were created by the devil meant to be stabbed to death by small children"). I commented that I long ago stopped using glue bottles which received a handful of questions as to how my students use glue instead. So, in this episode, I thought I'd share my solution with you!

For what we call glue cups, I use little resealable cups available at the grocery store. After a couple of weeks, the glue near the top begins to dry which can easily be pealed away and the container once again looks like new (not to mention, it's ultra satisfying pealing away that dried glue, I have kids ask to do it!). For brushes, we use those plastic bristle junk brushes that you can purchase by the millions. As for the container, I just happened to get lucky with these but really any plate, tray, whatever would work. Cover the glue at the end of the day, soak those brushes at night and never have to fiddle with those pesky bottles again! PRAISE BE.

Of course, that doesn't mean that this won't happen in your art room. But it will prevent these bad boys...

From becoming a weapon of mass glue bottle distraction. ETHEL, DON'T DO IT! RUN, ELMER, RUUUUUUN!

And hopefully this solution will mean that you and your students can return to using glue for the true reason it was intended...

Love to hear your solutions for getting out of that sticky mess that glue can be!