What the Art Teacher Wore #140

More Me Made May-ness Monday: Could I fit any more M's into that intro? Me thinks not. blouse: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; skirt: Made by Me, details here

Hey, friends! I hope your week was fantabulous. This coming week of mine not only includes the last week of school but also our school-wide art show (yes, I know that's crazy...no, I didn't plan it that way). I'll be certain to share all the details of the art show with y'all in a super photo heavy blog post this Wednesday. That'll prolly be the next time you hear from me as I'm certain to be buried under artwork until then.

In this here post, I'll give y'all a sneak peak into what the kids have been creating in preparation for el art showness. Also, since it's #MeMadeMay, I'm still sporting something I created daily. I'll be sharing all of these MeMades in a big fat post at the end of the month. Please, try and curb your enthusiasm. Until Wednesday, kids, fingers crossed I can pull off this art show! Toodles!

 Being MeMadeMay and all, I decided to go with a vintage tape measure as a headband and a wee lil vintage sewing machine brooch. Dude at Starbucks: "Is that caution tape in your hair?! Cool!" (insert head-banging-on-wall emoji here).

 Man, I gotta let you in on a lil secret. During these last few days of school, let the kids work on murals. Throw a big fat sheet of paper on the tables, let them work in groups of their choice, crank up the music to drown out the sound of their voices (I kid! Kinda!), give 'em a theme and watch 'em go to town.

 Granted, I did have a total of four kids completely loose their minds and paint their hands (like, two painted their hands red, y'all. Yes, they were caught "red handed". Sigh.) but for the most part, we had a great time. These will be used as the back drop for our Village of Kindness. Deets to come but a sneak peak here. 

 Back to School Dress Tuesday: I crafted this dress at the start of the school year. It seriously seems like yesterday. With all of our snow days (I think we had 10?), this year seemed to zip by! Any of you teachers out there feel the same? dress: blog post here; shoes: Anthro, gift from a friend (thanks, Rebecca!)

 A while back, a teacher buddy gave me these huge posters of white paper. The kids have been painting circle paintings on them as another part of our art show excitement. You'll notice that not only are we painting but glazing clay projects as well. Ah, the end of the school year. Nothing like that rush to get EVERY-THANG done. At the last minute. 

 Dresses Made During Snow Days Wednesday: Are really the best dresses, aren't they? I managed to bust out a ton of dresses this winter because of all those days. That was lovely. Not having enough time to finish all the art projects that I'd dreamed to doing with the kids? Not so much. dress: details here, y'all; sandals: like, ancient. Target

 I had kindergarten-land for the very last time this past week. We had a Yay-Boo moment. Yay, we'll see each other next year! Boo, this is our last art class as kindergarteners. So, we made a Kinder-Garden! We drew flowers in black oil pastel then painted them with either warm or cold colors. Then we switched the script for the background. I thought they came out just lovely. And one more thing to hang for the art show, yay!

 It's Come to This...Flip-Flops Thursday: I started the week in heels and by the middle, I was done. I scored these fun flips in NOLA. Get this, they smell like flowers! They are from a brand called Melissa that makes scented shoes. I love them! I was smelling my feet all day. Don't judge. sweater and brooches: thrifted; dress: made by me! By the way, this blog post, if you dare to read it, is INSANE...here; flips: Melissa brand

OH, this excitement happened this week! Our "Johnson Elementary has Heart" mural went up this week! If you follow me on insta-gram crackers, you have already seen this. Full blog post to come...but until then, here's the start of our process. I love how this cheers up our front office which was formally referred to as the DMV for it's lovely drabness. 

 Last Year's Back to School Dress Friday: Can I just brag and say that I've already got NEXT year's B2S dress in the werkz? Das right! Even if my sewing room did look like this just 24 hours ago (scroll downeth. Then scroll back upeth cuz I'm not done jib-jabbin' yet). sweater: Betsy Johnson, found at Buffalo Exchange; dress: blerg post here

 So. Can we have an honest chat here for a moment. I know when you come to this blog, like most, I show you the nice, clean and sunny side of my life. But I really, like really-really, struggle with packrat-itis. I recently picked up the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and I'm really enjoying it. Bottom line: get rid of anything that does not bring you joy. Now, I find that hard to apply as an artist/art teacher because, well, you never know, you know? However, this weekend, I decided to attack my sewing room (btw, welcome to my sewing room, y'all!) and, kidz, I gotta tell you, it felt so good! I'll be filling up my etsy shop with goodies next weekend, taking a truck load to Goodwill and tossing the rest. 

Ah! I can't even tell you how good this feels! My new motto is: nothing on the floor and nothing up to the ceiling (yes, it was that bad). I'll have to give you a tour soon! 

In the Art Room: Ceramic Flowers with Third Grade

Well, spring is here but I gotta tell ya, for me, it feels like my spring done sprung. I'm absolutely beat this time of year. Between putting together our school-wide art show (where I've not hung a single thing, thanks to all of my parent volunteers. I.LURVE.YOUS.) and trying to clean up after a year of bad put-stuff-away-after-you-use-it habits (I'm so bad, y'all. I've got more cabinet space then Ole Mother Hubbard and I still leave everything out all over my counters), I'm a walkin' talkin' zombie. Therefores, I have no DIY goodness to offer you this week, dears. Howeverness, I do have this super sweet ceramic flower project that my third graders just wrapped up!

 (Insert "awwww" emoji here.)

Like, that's a sculpted hummingbird created without instruction, y'all. (Insert "child prodigy" emoji here. Which I imagine looks like Doogie Howser. Or a childhood photo of me. Ahem.)

And a frog snagging his lunch. Let's face it, these sculptures are way cooler than any DIY of mine. Here's how these crafty kids created 'em. 

 We started out with some low-fire clay the size of a grapefruit. and a styro bowl. 

 We then created ping-pong ball sized spheres. 

And proceeded to squish 'em flat. We kept the thickness as thick as a cookie. Any thinner will become too fragile and too thick takes for-evah to dry. And we ain't got time for dat!

Once they were all squishied, we lined them all up and went to war with the one wee piece on the left. Actually I have no idea why I snapped this photo and then proceeded to share it here. I'm tellin' ya. The end-o-the-year has devoured that gray blob between my ears. 

Shape a couple of those flattened circles into leafy shapes if you wanna. 

 Use a pencil to draw veins. Again, if you wanna. 

 Start layering the leaves and flower petals into the bowl. For slipping and scoring, we use a toothbrush dipped in slip. We still use the terminology but this method is way easier than actually having the kids score with a pen tool. 

Why am I talking, these photos are pretty self-explanatory, right? You don't even need me, just the pics. I'm like IKEA directions but way easier and without the long hours of wrestling with particle board only to discover you've got a couple screws loose. Both figuratively and literally. 

 Oh, look! A flower donut!

 Fill it in,y'all. 

Just to make sure the center is secure and all flower petals are attached, some kids added a coil around the center of the flower.

 And viola! Finished! 

From there I went into my lil speech about how you can make anything in all of clay land if you know how to create a coil, slab and a sphere. Together we brainstormed some ideas on what we'd create and just how that could be accomplished with those three things. These ceramic pieces were created in one 60 minute class period. 

 Once they were bisque fired, we used Amaco's Teacher's Palette Glaze which I looooove. The colors were so bright and rich that I'm an instant fan. 

Today the kids were able to catch a glimpse of their projects while creating labels for the art show. They were thrilled with the transformation. Glazing with kids is truly magical.

Almost as magical as their imagination! Whutz your fave clay project? 

In the Art Room: Desert Landscapes with Third Grade

Hello, Tumblin' Tumbleweeds! I hope all y'all are feelin' footloose and fancy-free (like, why would you wanna be free of fancy?! I take it back, I hope you are fancy-full). My third graders have been wrapping up their art projects as the end rapidly draws near (like, 7 days left, y'all. Not like I'm counting the days, minutes, seconds or anything. Ahem) and I realized I'd never shared these beauties with ya! So in this here post, I'll fill you in on our process, the prezi used and some other whut-nuts. 

 So I've been kinda obsessed with having the kids work in chalk since we created those chalked ceiling tiles last month. And the kids have really enjoyed working with it as well. There's just something about using an art supply that involves smearing and getting up-to-our-elbows messy that's just irresistible. 

Since these guys didn't have a chance to make ceiling tiles, I thought I'd let 'em work on a desert landscape. It tied in nicely with our theme of Mexico and allowed me to introduce a super fab contemporary female artist, Sushe Felix. 

When I first spotted Sushe's work, I was totes smitten. And I totes thought she was working in chalk! That is until I saw this photo...

Like, fur realz?! All those amazingly even gradations are PAINTED?! Are you kitten me? I am in love with her work, you can view more of it (and her hubby's, his work is pretty groovy as well) here. 

Right? Totes smitten. If you have a chance, check out her paintings of animals, they are so cute. The girls let out a collective "awwwww!" when I shared a baby owl painting with them. 

For this project, we used the KOSS brand chalk that had worked so well for our ceiling tiles. We also used 9" X 12" sheets of paper.

I told the kids that their first step was to create their background. They could use any light color they wanted for their sky and any coupla colors they thought might look good for a desert floor. 

We blended with our fingers because it's super fun. I did tell 'em to use separate fingers for different color blending so as not to muddy their vibrant colors. 

 Next the kids cut out big cloud shapes.

And colored them with darker colors of chalk in the same fam as the color of our sky. Again, this was to prevent muddy looking colors. 

Using one hand to hold the paper super still, we used our other hand to smear the chalk upward. 

The key is not to let the paper move so that your cloud stencil can create a crisp line. 

 Like-a dis.

Then we flipped the cloud paper over and repeated the process on the other side of our masterpiece. 

Next up: creating the mountains! Cut a zig-zag mountain-y kind of shape out of some scrap paper. 

Color like you did the clouds with a variety of greens. However, this time, instead of pushing the chalk up, pull the colors downward.

The kids seriously thing this entire process is magical. You will be considered high class art teacherin' royalty with this one, I promise ya.

 Now cut out a piece of paper that doesn't have peaks like a mountain but has plateaus. We borrowed some desert books from the library to use on our tables for inspiration. Let's hope the librarian doesn't notice the chalk dust. 

 For the cliffs we did the same pull-down-the-chalk method. 

Once complete, we looked at even more desert books and my stash of How-to-Draw books for ideas of what could live in our landscape. 

Just a mile?! Well, I'm not taking my chances with that scorpion, yikes!

 Love the pink sunset in this work of art. We did chat about creating depth and space with a decrease in size of objects, rivers and roads. 

Just 200 more miles to Tennessee, y'all! Hope in your dune buggy and drop by! Tell next time, kids.