Scrapbooking

I'm making a blank scrapbook for a gift.  This person is having twins, so I'm actually making two books.  It's not for someone I know, but it is something my sister-in-law wants me to make for her to give as a gift.  Does that make sense?  Anyways, I've made these before as gifts and they are just the scrapbook pages without the photos.  Anywhere you see "pic" is where the pic would go.  I need to assemble them all in the book and then the first book is complete!

Three Flowers on Grid

Mixed Media with two flower pictures and a flower painting.  Scrapbook paper and watercolor paints were used.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you!!  I hope you all have a relaxing and laughter filled day.  Here is a picture of my two favorite people in the world... my husband Andrew and baby Daria.  We had a great, busy Christmas and now we are going to relax for a few days!  Three family parties, church, presents and lots of food. 

Our Tiny Friends and Foes Exhibit

My students participated in a community art exhibit at the Overture Center in Madison, WI.  The exhibit was fiber representations of microorganisms.  The opening was this past Friday and it was amazing!  All of the kids' artwork was displayed, alongside other community artists.  Here is a link to all of OUR microorganisms.  You can see my post about this process here. 

Here are some pictures of the gallery opening night.  My students' work (and my own microorganism) is mixed in with the other artists' works. 

Yay, Christmas! Products and stuff that I bought or received.

Yay, I love Christmas.  I'm not someone who likes to celebrate Christmas for two months with lights, decorations and music since Thanksgiving.  But on the actual party days with families, I have a lot of fun. I'm also very excited because I have 2 weeks off of teaching to spend time with my darling baby girl and also to spend some time making art.  Daria (who is 1 year and 2 months old) has started to become interested in coloring and painting like her mom.  I will place her on my lap and she will watch me paint with watercolors, laughing as I put the colors on the paper.  It works well until she grabs the paintbrush and tries to color herself or put it in her mouth.  She likes to color (and chew on) regular crayons, but we also have been letting her color with these:













She will sit there for a half hour on the floor and scribble with them or just play with the markers.  The good thing about these is that they don't color on anything except the Color Wonder paper, so she can't make a mess.  I wouldn't recommend them for older kids but for kids age 1-3 they are great.



I'm not a very shopping oriented person (well, I like looking, but not spending so much money).  An art kit is a great idea for a little kid.  Any kind of art supplies would be great for a kid to play with.  Elementary kids especially love: Model Magic  I highly recommend it.  Very little mess and it's similar to play doh, but it's more fluffy, like a marshmallow.











And of course, I do love receiving art supplies for myself for gifts.  This week I got some great artsy presents that I'm super excited about:














 I rarely buy new, full price items, especially for art materials or books.  Half.com has a lot of books for cheap, or I buy used books from amazon.com.  Actually, I rarely ever buy art books anymore if I have looked through them first and they are not at the library.  I will often just check them out from the library when I want to look at them.  Occasionally the library will not have them (like this creative illustration book) and I just HAVE to read it, so I will ask for it or purchase it then.  One reason is become you can easily become consumed in books.. you run out of shelf space for all of them quickly.  Art supplies are trickier.  Most often, I will wait until I have a Michaels' coupon (most Sundays they are in the paper) to purchase something I want. Joann's also has them and they are usually 40% off of one item.  Then you can usually get a good deal. 

Another way I save money on books is through paperbackswap.com. I have swapped at least 50 books now. You can put them on your wish list and if someone posts them you will be notified. It is a free service, you just pay for shipping on books that others' request from you. You don't have to pay for shipping on books that you request. I've gotten art books, childrens books, fiction, non fiction and even audio books before.

Winter Notecard

I painted this little winter illustration this week and then copied it to make little winter note cards.  Perfect for thank you notes.    :)

Holiday Fun

One ornament made by a student

The week before winter break not much gets done in the classroom.  It's hard to start something new when we will be off school for 2 weeks.  So, as kids finished up projects I took out a bunch of random art supplies, cookie cutters, glitter, felt, and pipe cleaners for them to make stuff out of.  Here's an ornament example one kid made. 

Clay Bells

 

 I did an after school clay class with kids in grades K-6

Cool Hands, Warm Heart.. Kindergarten

Cool Hands, Warm Heart

The kindergartners traced their hands and colored them with cool colors.  They drew a heart and colored it with warm colors.

COOL COLORS:  Remind us of cool things, like the ocean.  Blues, greens, and purples are cool colors.

WARM COLORS:  Remind us of warm things, like the sun.  Reds, oranges and yellows are warm colors.

cloth and paper collage

Page of watercolor doodles.

One of the kids in my classes was wearing this shirt.

I thought this shirt was so cute!!

Art Teacher Blog Directory

I posted this before and I thought a reposting would be nice. Add your art teacher blog to this directory and then repost it to your website. The more people who repost and add it to the list will help all of us get more traffic to our blogs.

Have a Spooky Christmas

I came into the art room this morning and our other art teacher was setting up this still life for the kids to Quick Draw at the beginning of the class.  The skeleton models were borrowed from the science room and the lights were already on the skeleton.  funny!

Clay Viking Ships

 

To complement their study of explorers, the Primaries made clay Viking ships.  We started by rolling a flat slab of clay with a rolling pin and then cutting out the bottom of the boat.  Next, we rolled coils of clay to build up the walls.  Finally, students could choose to add a dragon head to the ship and shields.  We painted a fabric sail while the clay projects dried.  After these were fired in the kiln, we painted them with watercolor paints and attached the sails.  These were sprayed with a varnish to seal the paint.