Thursday, December 6, 2012

In the Art Room: Parisian Silhouettes

What better way to say "au revoir" to Paris, France than by hot air balloon? Or hand glider? Or, what the heck, a parachute attached to one's head (that poor dude on the far left kinda makes me giggle).
 I'm here to share with you the second Parisian-themed project my totally awesome third grade artists just finished up. We actually began this project at the introduction of our French unit when we were learning how to speak and write in French (you might recall a certain pink poodle named Fifi introduced us to the language of love). If you take a close look at the crayon resist in the background, you'll notice a little of our French vocabulary.
I just now noticed how this incredible artist somehow managed to cut out a tiny person in her hot air balloon. These artists always amaze me.
 But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me tell you how we went about creating our Super Silhouettes:
  1. We began with 12" X 18" heavy stock drawing paper. I learned a long time ago that anything below 60 lbs paper is just junk. We used white oil pastels to write French words all over our papers. We chatted about variety, fonts and threw in a couple drawings of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de  Triomphe when the writing became too tedious. 
  2. From there we began our water color painting portion of the project. I never really was a fan of watercolor paint with children because I always found the colors to be very, well, watery. And pale. However, when I learned about Crayola's Mixing Sets, I became an overnight watercolor-with-children convert. These are available in most art supply catalogs. Don't want another plastic case of watercolors? Remember, you can purchase individual colors. My favorites in the set are fuschia, turquoise, red-orange and blue-violet.
 3. I did limit the kids to either warm or cool colors with fuschia being the swing color. When introducing watercolor, I demo to the kids how to moisten each color with a drop of water and twirl the brush around in the color on it's tippy-toes like a ballerina (no scooting the brush around on it's bottom and giving it spider legs). I emphasize how the colors should be translucent, not opaque. Painted areas should have a watery appearance, not dry, scratchy brush marks. And, of course, everyone lets out a squeal when they see how the oil pastel resists the watercolor. Much better than a crayon, by the way.
 4. On the second day of Watercolor Wonderland, I introduce a couple of tricks. I demonstrate double dipping the brush, first loading it with one color and then adding a different color to the tip. When the brush is laid on the paper on it's side, it produces a gradation of a couple colors. You can see that best in the word "violet" in the painting above.
5. Another trick is the introduction of salt. When sprinkled on damp paper, it absorbs the paint and produces a beautiful snowflake effect.
 6. Once finished, we had a chat about some of the most famous places in Paris. We also discussed what a silhouette was and brainstormed some ideas of what we could add to a silhouette landscape. I created the above poster so the kids could see some ideas. Symmetry was emphasized.
I love the "Paris" above the Eiffel Tower.
We did have some chats about scale...and decided that large silhouette cut outs would have the appearance of being in the foreground while small cut outs look to be in the background. Unless that happens to be a giant hand glider dude. With super long arms. In which case, that theory is out the window.
A kite?! Genius.
 When I told the kids that we were going to be saying "au revoir" to Paris, France and "guten tag!" to Germany, they seemed sad to go. When one of them asked if I was going to repaint my windows for Germany I believe I said the words, "are you crazy?! No!" To which the questioner replied, "good! Then we aren't really leaving Paris!" 

And that made me pretty happy. Almost as happy as these sweet silhouettes.


Monday, December 3, 2012

DIY: Blue Christmas Dress



 As you read this, you might be sitting in your decked-out-for-the-holidays living room. Complete with a bedazzled and trimmed tree, wreath on the door, candles flickering in every window and lights strung outside the house.

If you came over to my house, you'd find a couple of pumpkins on my front step, flowers still blooming in planters (darn petunias just won't die!) and a bedazzled and trimmed pink Christmas tree. It kinda looks like Holiday Goulash. I'd apologize to my neighbors if they were still speaking to me.

Despite all that, what I do have is one completed Christmas dress! And not just any ole completed Christmas dress but one that Lights Up!! That's right, something that rad calls for Unnecessary Capitalization and Multiple Exclamation Points!! Eat That, Grammar Po-Po.
No, that's not my beeper. I upgraded to a cell phone last week. It's my battery pack for my LED lights.
I couldn't resist this vintage reproduction fabric when I found it at my local fabric shop. I scooped up three yards and decided to go with another version of the Simplicity pattern I used for my Cuckoo Clock Dress. This time, I went sleeveless for a coupla reasons: one, if you know me at all, you know I hate putting in sleeves. Like, hate isn't even a strong enough word. Despise. Detest. De-reallydon'tlike. And, two, I felt sans sleeves would give this dress a vintage vibe.

 But the idea to create a light-up dress didn't happen until hubs and I took a trip to his fave store in the whole universe: Big Lots.

Now, my hubs is an Idea Man. He is constantly coming up with new ideas for food trucks (my fave: the Organic Create-Your-Own-Flavor Cotton Candy Cart), clothing, and, of course, musical instruments. I usually know when a Big Idea is coming because his sentences begin with, "Tell me what you think of this..."

And that's what happened when I was wandering the isles of B.L. on Saturday, checking out where all ya'll snagged your Christmas decor. Hubs pointed out the little box of lights and said, "Tell me what yo think of this: You make your Christmas dress light up."
 Now, sometimes, hub's big ideas are just too big. But once he explained this one, I began to think it was doable. With his help, it was actually a piece of cake. 

You can make any ole dress light up. Here's how you do it:
  •  Sew a 2" hem at the bottom of your dress with a piece of twine that has a long enough tail to hang out of the opening of the hem. Leave about a 6" opening at the center front of your dress, right underneath the pockets.
  • Seam rip a hole in your pocket.
  • Feed the end of the LED lights through the hole.
Originally, I was going to sew in two strings of lights but the weight of two battery packs in my pockets didn't seem ideal. Hence the two strands of twine.
  •   Tie the end of the lights to the end of a piece of twine and pull through. I'm making that sound very easy...it was actually a two person job.
  • Untie string from the lights and close most of the hem opening.



 Dress front and back. This dress version of the Simplicity dress actually went by quickly. Skipping those four hour sleeves really helped. Normally I'd need sleeves in December but so far, no. It's been almost 70 degrees for the last coupla days.

This bodice is different than the other dress too in that it doesn't have that inverted V thingie. Thankfully.
 So you know, sewing a blue Christmas dress means I had Elvis' Blue Christmas running through my head the entire time. I managed to score this unopened album over Thanksgiving for a mere $3! It's been spinning on my record player since.
 And so there you have it! A Blue Christmas Dress. I'm pretty stoked and I can't wait to wear it to school. The kids are always full of questions and curiosity when I wear I dress I've created. 

Okay. I'm off to remove my pumpkins, planters and finish the Christmas decoratin' I've started. Because the song goes "I'll have a Blue Christmas..." not "I'll have a Pumpkin on my Porch for Two Months Christmas." Although that does have a certain ring to it...


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

In the Art Room: Hot Air Balloons Over Paris

After weeks of working on this collage landscape, this little first grade dude is ready to take his hot air balloon for a ride. Over Paris, France, no less.
Hey there, artsy folk! Look who's launched their hot air balloons -- my fantastic first grade artists! This project has been so much fun but the icing on the cake were the giggles and squeals of laughter the kids let out when they finally saw their little likeness in the balloon. It was a lengthy project (as all of mine are, sigh) but well worth the wait. 
A hallway of hot air.
We began this project right after our world-mural self-portrait and our passport/suitcase project. I like to use this landscape collage as an introduction at the beginning of the year because so much can be packed into this lesson (painting, color mixing, texture, collage, landscape, etc). I used a similar collage landscape lesson with my second grade students for the Parisian Landscape Collage. And I also used this project last year for an Egyptian Landscape. It's one of those tried and true projects that I absolutely love.
I love how this artist positioned his Eiffel Tower in such a way that he seems to be gazing at it.
Now, I've got my students for half an hour. By the time I'm done jibber-jabbering and they are settled down to work, they have around 15 minutes of work time. That's with 5 minutes at the end for clean up and The Smartest Artist if we are really lucky. So my lessons are in baby bites. Here's how I broke down the creating part of the lesson. After looking at many a sunset and other artists works, here's what we did:

  • Day 1: Using a large vertical paper folded in half, students learn how to paint a tint of yellow (that's light yellow created with white and yellow) and a tint of orange (learning to mix the orange themselves.)
  • Day 2: Create a tint of magenta and mix purple.
  • Day 3: We chatted about clouds. If they are near the horizon, they are oh-so-small. Closer to the top of the paper, they increase in size. Many clouds have a flat bottom (which always gets a giggle) and a fluffy top. Texture is our word of the day.
  • Day 4: Using a separate piece of paper that is about a third the size of our large sheet, we create a green tint and give it a texture.
  • Day 5: Same as above, this time with blue paint.
  • Day 6: Collage Time! We looked at a map of Paris and found that there is the River Seine runs right through it. So we glued our blue textured paper to the bottom. Then we tore our green papers in half. The kids then separated the green papers depending on how wide they wanted their rivers to be. Once decided, they glued the land down.
Once that was complete, we put our landscapes away for a bit to learn about hot air balloons. This book was a wonderful resource as it names and explains each part of the balloon.
When placing our hot air balloons on our paper, we chatted about drifting outside of the rectangle format of our paper. This little one looks like she's floating away.
After reading about the balloons, we created out own:
  • Day 7: Using either warm or cold color pieces of tissue paper, the kids used watered down Modge-Podge to cover a piece of paper that they had drawn a balloon shape on.
  • Day 8: They cut out their balloons and used a sharpie to add lines that would help their balloon look more three-dimensional. 
  • Day 9: Photography Day! While the kids painted their hot air balloon baskets (which were toilet paper tubes cut in half) with vertical and horizontal lines, I took their photos. They stood in front of a large piece of blue butcher paper and put their hands over the back of a chair that had brown paper on it. I snapped two shots, one of the looking up and the other, looking down. We chatted about what they might see and that helped them become animated for their photos.
Sometimes we have early finishers. They usually meet on the floor to "play teacher" (where one student sits in my chair and quizzes the other students on a basket of three-dimensional shapes I have) or we read a book. This book was perfect. We found out that the first hot air balloon was launched in France! And that the first passengers were a rooster, a lamb and a duck.
  • Day 10: We glued down our hot air balloon, our basket and carefully cut out our photo.
  • Day 11: We chatted some more about the Eiffel Tower and it's history. We learned out to cut out a symmetrical tower and decorate it using the same lines that Gustave Eiffel used in his tower. I was determined that this would be our last day, so I may or may not have been late getting the kids to get those towers decorated and glued down.
Don't you just LOVE this?! I know I do! It was created by one of my practicum students to help support my lesson. The kids adore it, especially the fact that Jes made an appearance.
Now, while I do love these, I am secretly dying for the kids to continue to add to the landscape. But did you see how many DAYS this took? Like, a million! So, I thought I'd ask your opinion (I have in the past and you guys always come through for me, thanks!)...what do you think? Collage some more or leave it be?

Regardless, I know that these artists couldn't be more pleased with their masterpieces. Thanks for reading!




Sunday, November 25, 2012

What the Art Teacher Wore #44

What I Wore on Wednesday: Don't ask me what happened to Monday and Tuesday. I'm on vacation. Which usually means pj's and unwashed hair for as many days as I can manage. In this case, it was only two. Mom came to visit on Wednesday, so I had to look semi-presentable. sweater: thrifted with vintage buttons added my me; skirt: vintage, thrifted; fishnets over tights (which I do believe I did every day this week): Target; boots: my good ole Seychelles; scarf: Germany
 Well, my Thanksgiving Break is now hours away from coming to an end. The reality of that has definitely not set in. I'm still knee deep in unfinished sewing/crafting/and Christmas decorating projects and I just can't bear the thought of leaving them untouched tomorrow. The silver lining is that I'm very excited about our upcoming unit on Germany. I've got my cuckoo clock dress and the coordinating lesson complete. But that's just for my second grade lesson. I've decided that my first and third grade are going to complete a gnome-themed project. Having done some research on gnomes, I thought I'd share it with you this week. They are quite the character.
Garden Gnome Liberation Front: Did you know there was such a thing? Apparently it's a group of (crazy) people in Europe whose mission is to rescue gnomes from their lives in boring middle-class gardens and return them to their original homes in the mountains. In this article, you can read how one group of guys can be hired to fight against The Front (as they're called) by dressing up as Snow White's Seven Dwarves to divert attention away from the gnomes and...I'm not sure what their services offer after that. They can also be hired for birthday parties. Something to keep in mind.
Thanksgiving!: Mom, hubs and I loaded up the cars and headed south to Birmingham, Alabama to visit the hub's parents and family. It was a deliciously lovely day that ended with a long walk down the railroad tracks collecting pine cones and railroad ties. dress: Anthro, picked up at Buffalo Exchange; blouse and belt: gifts from friends; boots: Frye, picked up for cheap at French's Boots in Franklin, Tn
So apparently, there is no definitive history of the gnome. It seems many cultures have their own version of a mystical dwarf, some dating as far back as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece. Fairy tales and folklore from medieval times are full of stories of goblins, trolls, leprechauns, elves, and fairies. This illustration is from Gnomes by Wil Huygen, illustrated by Rien Poortvliet.
Black Friday Shopping: We are rather lazy Black Friday shoppers as we didn't leave the house til 8am. By the time we hit the stores, shelves were pretty empty and the Crazy Shopping Zombies were gone. I could tell my mom was pretty bummed. She's a serious people watcher that was dying to go out at midnight. But I just don't have the stomach to watch humanity behave humiliatingly. sweater and tights: picked up just recently at Target; dress and belt: vintage, from a play I performed in during high school; boots: I only brought one pair on this trip -- Frye.
Story goes that the first gnome statue was introduced to a garden by an Englishman named Sir Charles Isham of Lamport Hall. After having built a huge rockery (er, that's a rock garden of sorts) and filling it with dwarf conifers, our friend of Lamport Hall just didn't feel his garden was complete. It was missing that certain gnome-y something. Sir Charles Isham picked his up in Germany where the figures were mostly kept in drawing rooms. When one gnome just wasn't enough, whole communities of gnomes were added to his garden. Image from pinterest.
Mom Love: After a slightly fruitless day of Black Friday shopping, my mom made the long drive back to Indiana. I'm guessing it took her around nine hours. Ouch. My butt goes numb after two. I'm so glad she made the trip.
The Gnome
by Margaret Morgan

Deep down he goes, the little gnome,
Deep down into his earthy home.
Deep Down among the roots he lives;
Such help to all the plants he gives.

He helps the seed to split its skin;
He helps the roots to settle in;
He helps the shoots to stand upright
And grow to reach the warm sunlight.

Sometimes he comes above the ground;
Sometimes his footprints can be found;
Sometimes, before the moon is up,
He drinks the dew from bluebell cups.



Exploring Birmingham Saturday: My mom-in-law took us on a tour of Birmingham's thrift and antique shops. We stopped by the awesome Peanut Depot for some cajun roasted nuts and some amazing baked goods at the Continental Bakery. We ended out tour with a view of the city. sweater: vintage, gift from my mom-in-law; scarf: Germany; skirt: Anthro; tights: Target
It's said that gnomes are optimists and that they breathe contentment. And I guess two gnomes are better than one. Especially when you've found your gnome-y match made in heaven. Image from the Gnome Habitat in Auburn, California.
Oh, look, it's me with my gnome-y love match. And he's almost got the gnome-beard to match. I'm working on a couple of matching conical shaped hats for us.
And I just had to include these gnome zombies by the artists Chris Stever and Jane DeRosa. You have to check out their etsy shop. I definitely would add these to my place-were-mostly-weeds-grow garden, especially at Halloween.
 Thanks for dropping by! And may the happy and optimistic spirit of the gnome be with you this week.











Tuesday, November 20, 2012

DIY: Gone Cuckoo

I know, I think it's sacrilege to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving as well but I was just dying to hang my new cuckoo ornaments on my tree. If it makes you feel better, I still have Halloween decorations up. From last year.
 As you might recall from my previous post, I've gone completely cuckoo. More so than usual. Remember I told you I was crafting a new dress from some super cute fabric by Kelly Lee-Creel's Storybook Lane collection? Well, here it is! And not only is it a brand new dress...it's a brand new pattern (cuz you know I usually just sew this dress...over and over and over and over). It was a pattern that truly tried my patience and made me question humanity so it's a marvelous miracle I was able to pull it off.

Now I've only sewn from two dress patterns, this one and the aforementioned. One was vintage, this one contemporary, both Simplicity. I like their patterns because the directions are clear(ish) and come with plenty of pictures (that I had a lot of fun coloring when I wasn't gouging out the eyes of the model in frustration).

My first dress with pockets!

Sometimes, whilst frustrated, I dubbed this the "Nine Levels of Hell" dress after Dante's Inferno. I ain't even gonna pretend I'm the least bit literary, I've never read the book. Or poem. Or is it a limerick? Dunno. What I do know is that at least eight of those levels of my Dress Making Hell where trapped in the land of The Sleeve.

Would you believe I had to take several photos of this sleeve because my ugly-old-lady-wrinkly-elbow kept photo bombing the picture? Hence the hand-on-elbow.
 This sleeve had many a problem. Firstly, look at that inverted "V" thingie. Cute, right? Not so much when you've had to seam rip it seven times and redo. And just look at it. It's still as wrinkly as my elbow. In the other photos, you'll see that the sleeve is tufted or puffy or pleated (can I get a correct word here, please?) on top. Boy that was fun. The first sleeve actually took me just under two hours to complete. Do you hear me? Dos horas.That translates to something like "too freakin' long!"
 You know, because inverted "V" sleeves just aren't hellacious enough, why not add one to the neckline? This one was actually not nearly as bad as the others. Prob because I'd had all those hours of practice.
Can we please pause a moment and take a look at my hair? Because it actually did what I told it to today. All thanks really to my amazing new hair dresser Jesse Linares. Not only did I get a great haircut, but, after removing my bumpit like a doctor would an alien baby (complete with appalled expression and wonderment), he gave me an amazing teasing comb. That's right, this big 'do is sans bumpit.
 As usual, when the dress making hell just became too much, I resorted to crafting. I had all of these adorable cuckoo clock scraps that I just couldn't bear to part with. So I decided to create some ornaments out of them.

 A friend of mine gave me a bunch of jewelry gift boxes in various sizes. I painted the brown boxes completely white and once try, I added lilac or light blue to the lids. Using a tiny brush, I added a pattern of lines.
 I cut out several of the clocks (using my tiny sewing scissors for the job) and Modge Podged them onto the lid. I bedazzled 'em with some gold glitter glue, drilled holes in the top for the string (and bottom of a couple for the buttons to hang from) and viola! Cuckoo Ornaments!
 After making the first batch of ornaments, I went back upstairs and tried to decide if my dress actually needed two sleeves. I mean, I could bring back the asymmetrical look, right? I decided to go back to crafting.
 These guys were created on the larger lids with random bits of wood. Did you know you can cut popsicle sticks with scissors? It's the truth, Ruth. I hot glued these together and spray painted them in my neighbor's yard. Didn't want to mess up my own grass.
A little work-in-progress photo.
After some spray painting, bedazzling and gluing, I was ready to hang these guys too. I used cinnamon sticks at the bottom of this clock.
 After all that crafting, there was nothing left to do but return to my dress. It turns out that the hard part was over as attaching the skirt, taking up the hem and inserting the zipper were all things I'd done before. And that's a good thing, because I've already cut out a couple more versions of this dress that are waiting to be sewn. These new ones, however, will be sleeveless. 

Thanks for dropping by!