DIY: Campbell's Soup Dress after Andy Warhol

Forget the dress, check out that soup-er mural! It's simply un-can-ny how much it resembles the work of Warhol. More condensed details on the fourth grade's latest masterpiece soon, but for now the h-Andy work of this dress will just have to be suffice. Or is the word "sufficient"? Eh, you say "tomato", I say "shut up, fool!" Because I'm rude like that. 

I dunno how you spent your weekend, because, as I mentioned, I'm rude and therefore forgot to ask, so lemme just tell you how I spent mine: Making a Campbell's Soup Can Dress in honor of our artist of the month, Andy Warhol. Oh! And did I mention that I almost committed sew-icide (death by sewing a nightmarishly impossible task)? Because I did. Seriously. Each one of those appliqued letters was at least ten years off my life. Which I don't suppose is possible being that there are 19. But whateves. Me and math have never gotten along.

You might recall I'm on a bit of a mission to create an outfit for each of our artists of the month. Thus far, I've managed to sew up a Great Wave dress in honor of Hokusai and a splatter-tastic number for Pollock. And now I can add some Andy Warhol to my dress-terpiece wardrobe. Yippie! It only shaved 190 years off my life (and, yeah, it took me from initially mentioning that math problem until now to come up with the answer)!

This whole mess, er, dress started when a sweet parent approached me about having the kids create posters for an upcoming canned food drive. I'd already had it in my head that our school's cafeteria needed a new mural and had mentioned such to Rebecca. With her big soon-to-be-an-amazing-art-teacher brain, she thought up the idea of the kids creating a class set of Andy can murals. And the rest is history (with details to come, pinkie swear and spit shake).

Check it out: the Souper Dress is a screenprinted paper dress that was made and sold by Campbell’s Soup Company in the late 1960s. Obviously, the creation of this dress was inspired by the one and only Warhol. How I'd love to get my kitten mittens on this number...if only it wasn't selling for hundreds of dollars on that devil website known as ebay.

 While student teacher extraordinaire was busy workin' on that, I was plotting my outfit to accompany said lesson. Because if it's one thing I've got, it's priorities. And a serious lack of mathematical skillz.

 

My mom happened to spot this dress on a recent thrift store jaunt and, knowing my can-plan, scooped it up for me. Can you believe it's perfectness? I swear this bad boy was just beggin to be Campbell's-soup-ized. To can-onize this dress (because after all the work, I'm declaring this thang a holy relic), I added a silver ban to the top and bottom. I didn't shorten the dress at all although in this side-by-side it appears that way. And, of course, I appliqued the crap outta the thing with all 19 of those letters. Not like I was counting or anything. Ahem.

Now I never really go about anything the right way or even the easy way, so if you are gonna embark on your very own Warhol number, might I suggest you go to a legit DIY blog. However, if you are up for a challenge of sew-icidal proportions then, welcome to the Thunderdome, friend! Grab your Xanax and let's hop to it! 

I began by laying my dress out and placing a sheet of tissue paper on top of that. I kinda love lettering so planning the size of the letters and penciling them in was fun for me...in a I-like-to-pick-at-my-hang-nails fun kinda way.

After that, I chose the fabric for my letters and ironed some fabric stiffener to the back. Wait, there's another name for that, right? Because "fabric stiffener" just can't be right. That makes it sound like I showed the fabric some dirty pictures of sewing machines and thread and it got all hot and bothered. And that's just weird. Wait, what were we talking about? Lemme start again, sorry...

Iron some stuff on the back of the fabric that will beef it up (heehee), pin tissue paper to fabric and cut. Wow, I managed to get all that out in one sentence when it took me an entire paragraph above.

Because I thought the pins would create puckers in the fabric when sewing, I tacked the letters down with Stitch Witchery which is that roll of stuff on the left.

And then the appliqueing commenced. Which, as you can see, is just a zigzag stitch really close together. I struggled with turning the curves of the letters which shoulda been a harbinger (the one SAT vocabulary word I actually remember) of what was to come with those curvy swirly "Cambell's" letters.

Speaking of...I actually contemplated felting these letters in place knowing they were to be a beast. But I opted to first give it a shot applique-wise and then resort to felting if needed.

Are there any pro-applique'ers out there? Because one look at this photo and you can see I'm strugglin'. Pushing all the fabric of the dress through the machine was not my cup of tea. Do the Real Housewives of Applique-town have a certain machine with a longer sewing machine arm, a flatter presser foot and a built-in margarita maker, perhaps?

When it was all said and done, I was pretty happy with my goofy dress. Which provoked mucho commentary when I hit the grocery store after school. Here's just a pinch of the convo I engaged in at the checkout counter:

Checkout Clerk: Oh! I love your dress! Did you make it?!

Me: Um, yeah. I did.

CC: Oh my goodness {Calling to the other checkout clerks:} Hey, guys, come over here and see this dress! She made it! 

Awkward Checkout Clerk: Neat. {Looking in my cart} You aren't buying any soup? That seems weird.

Me: Yeah, well. I'm trying to cut back.

ACC: That's too bad. {Checkin' my dress out again} I hear it's "Mmmm...mmm...good." Can I help you out with your groceries?

Me: {Trying to suppress my freaked'outed'ness}NO! I mean, no. Thanks.

Stay tuned for the post on how the fantastic fourth grade created these murals. Until then, finish that soup! AND stay away from Awkward Checkout Clerks. Toodles!

What the Art Teachers Wore #78

Dots and Stripes Monday: There was once this teacher poll that went around my school where we could vote for each other, senior year style. You know, like "Best Dressed" (which I'm still ticked I didn't get, some people just don't know style) and "Best Hair". Guess who was "Most Likely to Wear Dots and Stripes Together"? That's right...dress: vintage, thrifted; sweater: Betsy Johnson, Plato's Closet; sandals: Shoe Carnival

I know what you're thinking, "Didn't I just hear from this crazy yesterday?!" Well, you'll have to forgive me, but I've got a bit of a blog backlog I'm trying to catch up with. I've got oodles of DIY's, art lessons, an ear wax extraction story that's not to be missed and, believe it or not, a whole post full of advice-giving goodness. No, I'm not kidding about that last part. Yes, some folks have been asking me, me of all unsane people, for life-living tips.

 Stop. Laughing. And pointing. That's just rude and it hurts my feelings. Jerk.

In other news (ahem, changing the subject in hopes that you'll stop the heckling), this here's the final installment of all things dot-gasmic.  You might recall, I've managed to wear nuthing but dots for the last two weeks in honor of Peter H. Reynold's The Dot. More on that here and here. Turns out I had just enough clothes to make it until the very dotted end with one spotted skirt to spare. And to think I thought I just wouldn't make it. I underestimated my own hoarding powers.

To wrap up all this dotted'ness, I thought I'd share with you some of my fave dotted paintings. I hope you dig 'em. Until next time!

Wassily Kandinsky, Several Circles, 1926 This series of trippy dot paintings are among my favorites of his. I like them better than his heavier looking works like the painting below...

Kandinsky, Concentric Circles, 1913

Feelin' Groovy Tuesday: This four dollar antique store dress always makes me feel so 1960's hip. dress: vintage; tights and belt: Target; shoes: Clarks; poodle pin: gift from a friend

Rebecca and I were so busy this week that we rarely remembered to take outfit photos this week...not to mention find out the details of her outfit. Pretty sure more of her wardrobe is Target or Anthro. Can't go wrong with either.

Are you familiar with the modern day pop artist Ryan McGinness? I love his work, especially these black light pieces from 2009. The overlapping script lines are so beautiful to me and the pop of color against the back is stunning. Now if only he could get the circles to rotate like a kaleidoscope, my mind would be blown.

Seriously. I've now got an art-craving to bust out my calligraphy pens and doodle like mad.

Betsy Johnson-Wannabe Wednesday: I found this dotted dress at Plato's Closet for $3 and I had to have it in my life. Sadly, the thing was just too short. So I added the leopard jersey print to the bottom and suddenly it was just a smidge less inappropriate. Success! dress and belt: Plato's Closet; shoes: ancient Anthro

Daw, she so cute.

Dan Christensen, O-Zone, 1988. I recently stumbled upon this artist and, I gotta tell you, I love his stuff, especially those dotted pieces below. He's apart of a group of artists called the Color Field movement. These artists were interested in exactly what it sounds like: large fields of color. And alternative means of applying color to their canvas. Here it looks like he might have used a giant airbrush to me.

Gah, I could stare at this all day. Well, not all day, I might go a little mental(-er) but I do love them. Especially how the dots seem to vibrate and move.

Like a circus without the creepy clowns, corn dogs and cotton candy.

Open House Thursday: Otherwise known as The Day Without End. But it was so much fun seeing the kids and chatting with their parents. dress: vintage, thrifted; shoes: Irregular Choice

So Gary Andrew Clark is the artist behind these dotted works. They remind me of Warhol meets Chuck Close on some sort of Alternate Universe Futuristic Planet. What I really like about these is that you can scoop 'em up for about $40 a pop here.

Who dat lady?!

FRIDAY, You Finally Made It!: It only took you forever. dress: ancient, Francesca's; shoes: Anthro

I know those happy pants came from Anthro. Aren't they adorbs? And, yes, I just used the word "adorbs". Deal wit it.

So I don't suppose I can go a whole post talking about dots and NOT mention Georges Seurat. I mean, dude put in his hours of pointillizing the daylights outta this canvas, I gotta give him a shout out for that. On a totally different subject, I bet that lady with the umbrella could out-twerk Miley any day, dontcha think?

On that note, I'll end this here post. Before the train to inappropriate town makes another stop to you's-about-to-lose-yer-job land. Later!

In the Art Room: The Dot

Hey there, long lost friends! I've finally recovered from what I dubbed The Longest Week of the Year and I'm ready to share just a bit of it with you. I'll spare you the passing-out-at-7:45pm-after-an-insane-Open-House//waking-up-in-full-makeup-and-school-clothes-at-5am-the-next-morn//consideration-of-simply-putting-on-shoes-and-going-to-school-in-aforementioned-slept-in-attire. Because that would just make me sound pathetic. 

What I've got for you today is just one of the three displays Rebecca, some super sweet volunteer moms and I prepared for Open House. This here is our The Dot display created for International Dot Day which I blerged about here, in case you need a refresher. For our contribution, we hung all of the coffee filter dots the children created (details on that shortly), hung the collaborative oil pastel dot designs created by the fourth grade and wrote out an abbreviated version of Peter H. Reynolds' story. I was so thrilled with how this all came together, I just had to show you!

This here is the long slide of a hallway to the art room. Dude, you don't even know how badly I wanna get my mitts on some skates and disco boogie down those ramps. On the right is my art room door (you might remember The Great Wave painting I created from this post). As you can see, I've got a ton of display space outside my room. Sadly, I'm kinda sucktastic when it comes to putting up art work. I tend to hoard it all until the end-of-the-year art show. This time, we took full advantage of our space.

Here you can see the backgrounds our 4th grade created. Each of the six tables in my room was covered in black bulletin board paper and prepped with a tray of oil pastels. The kids were already using the oil pastels to finish off a separate mural project (which I cannot wait to show you this upcoming week!) so this was a good transitional project. After reading The Dot, we chatted about the variety of dots Vashti created and set to creating our own unique versions.

I have two 1/2 hour 4th grade classes back to back. So when the next group of kids were seated, they were looking at the previous class' dots...which stumped them a bit. They seemed to only want to create their own dots so a chat about enhancing the dots and working collaboratively was muy importante.

This palette was a different collaborative project from last year that we had in the front lobby for the art show. Because the kids have created a new display for the lobby (soon to make an appearance on el bloggo), I moved the palette to outside my door.

By writing out the story, I thought visitors would have a better understanding of our display. I did notice several families reading the story at Open House which made me pretty happy. I've also noticed some big time hallway loiterers reading the story as well. And I just don't have the heart to holler at 'em to get to class.

I used the kids' "messy mats" as the storybook paper. At first I thought I could write out the entire story...but the cramping of my hand told me otherwise. So, sorry, Peter H. Reynolds! I did what my wimpy ole painting hand would allow.

When I was reading this story to one 4th grade class and we got to the very last page where is says, "Vashti stared at the boy's squiggle. And then she said..." one of the kids ventured a guess and said, "IT'S TERRIBLE!" Which, I ain't gonna lie, I kinda thought was funny. BUT I didn't tell him that.

In case you are wondering how these coffee filters were hung, it took some thinking. Yes, seriously. Originally, I thought we could simply just paper clip them together without putting holes in the filters. However, the weight of the chain of filters prevented that from being an option. So we resorted to puncturing them with one clip, connecting the second and puncturing that through the second filter. Easy.

If you've never done the painting-coffee-filters thing, it's simple. Because the kids are eventually going to be using these as kimonos in an upcoming project, they were using colors that reminded them of their favorite seasons. We left the center blank so we could see their name. Once colored in with water soluble markers, the students placed their filter on a styrofoam plate and painted it entirely with water. From there, they brought them to Rebecca who removed them from the plate and placed them on sheets of plastic.

Once on the plastic, the filters were sprinkled with coarse salt to give it that groovy speckled look.

Our largest display is in front of a bank of windows.

And there you have it, our Dot-tastic display!

What the Art Teachers Wore #77

Dot-Tastic Monday: Okay, I gotta admit, it was by total accident that I wore this polka dotted dress on Monday...which proceeded to inspire my wardrobe for the next coupla weeks. All for the love of The Dot. dress: vintage, Wasteland in San Francisco; shoes: Swedish Hasbeens, Anthro; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; necklace: Target

Have ya'll read the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds? Well, I have. And so has Rebecca. Like, 24 times. Once for each class we see. And, I gotta admit, I never tire of the book. It's that great. So when I found out that there was something called International Dot Day, I knew we had to participate. Rebecca suggested we hang the kids' painted coffee filters (created for a future art project) and, viola! We dot-a-sized the entire school. More details on our project later this week.

For the occasion, I've decided to wear a polka dotted outfit until our school's Open House this Thursday. Which means, when all is said and done, I will have worn dots for 10 days. At first I didn't think I could pull it off and thought I'd be doing some dot-tastic DIY's but, as it turns out, this hoarder's wardrobe is just full of dots. It's a little nuts. Someone might have a problem. Just sayin.

But back to the dot. All week, we've been stressing the theme of The Dot which is to inspire. Without ruining the plot, an art teacher inspires a student who then inspires an aspiring artist in return. During deep convo about this theme with my first grade students, this happened:

Me: So! What do you think would happen if this story continued...?

First Grade Dude: That little boy in the story will be expired.

Me (without correcting him because I'm dying to see where this goes): Oh yeah? And what do you think will happen when everyone sees our dots on display for Open House?

F.G.D.: Then our family will expire, our friends will be expired and, well, everyone will expire!

Yeah, so. Let's hope nothing that dramatic happens. I'll keep you posted. Until then, I hope your week is dot-tastic!

Dontcha love this dress? Girl traveled all over Europe this summer and picked this dress up in Stockholm. How many people get to say that? "Oh, this ole thang? Stockholm, baby. Stock-I'm-a-World-Traveler-holm."

Not read The Dot? Why not let youtube read it for you?

1960's Does Dots Tuesday: There's this little thrift store I rarely go to and on the day I do, I find this sweet 1960's two piece. What you can't see is the sweet bow at the neck and the delicate buttons down the back. Can you tell I love it? shoes: vintage, thrifted; daisy necklace and earrings: gift from a friend

I love those sandals. They will more than likely come up missing from her closet. Don't tell her.

Art teacher buds, have you ever participated in International Dot Day? This was my first time...and I loved it! I can't wait to share with you what else we've created to celebrate this awesome book.

Dotted Window Wednesday: Chaining these coffee filters together took some trouble shooting. I'll have so spare you the trouble and show you are secrets this week. dress: thrifted; sweater: ebay

Not gonna lie, this colorful window makes me pretty happy.

Picture Day Thursday: Yay! Nothing like remembering it's Picture Day until you are walking out the door. So I just stuck a palette in my hair and called it a day. dress: Target; belt: Plato's Closet

Oops, he forgot "Be Expired!"

PANTS! Friday: Seriously. I have more students make comments when I wear pants than any other day. It's kinda craycray. blouse: gift from a friend; jeans: Target; shoes: Anthro

Guess who got her hairs did?! I love it, don't you? When it's straight, she's got an Ariel vibe and when it's curly, she's totally that girl from Brave. The kids love it. And check out that awesome hair bow. Her mom created that for her when she was a kid...the kids and I love it's sparkly awesomeness.

And, in celebration of a good book, it's Book Fair Week at our school! This year the book fair has an Egyptian theme (where were they two years ago?!). So to kick it off, we dressed a lil crazy and caused a ruckus on the school's morning announcements. That's one of my dear teacher buddies wrapped up in toilet paper. She's such an awesome sport.