Sooner or Later...

It'll definitely be" later gator"!!

This week is Vacation Bible School and it's my gig so I will be off on an

 Island Odyssey for the week.

We are having a great time at VBS and I'll have some fun crafts to show you after all the fun is over.

PS. I made this sign for some friends who went to Florida- serious gator fans. They invited me to a party and I was supposed to take a dish to share but I didn't. I took this instead :) There was plenty of food anyway.

So...see you later gator!!

Pretty As A Peacock!!

We made awesome Peacocks at Art Camp a couple of weeks ago.

We used a Dick Blick canvas as our background ( we had already used a repurposed board for our rock family portraits so we wanted to mix it up a bit.) The feathers were paint sticks from Sherwin Williams, the bodies were small wooden plaques ( 50 cents and then 40% off - score! ) from Hobby Lobby and the neck and heads were glued together from jumbo crafts sticks, bottle caps and other found items. We used wiggle eyes or Sharpies for the eyes, the beak was fun foam and that thing-y on the top of a peacock's head ( what is that called?) was made from half a peel and stick fun foam snow flake - thank you Ms. Becky for that idea!!

Since we were all about color and painting at Art Camp this year we decided whether or not our peacock feathers world be warm colors or cool colors. Then we used a different color family for the background - hopefully - or in the case of many of the girls, pink. And one little camper had a fairly monochromatic week - orange was the color choice for everything he did - no negotiating!!

The designs on the peacock feathers were made with our fingers. Lots and lots of blended dots. We added in some glitter paint at the end because peacock feathers shimmer.

We read a great book about peacocks and the designs and colors on animals.

It was called Bees, Snails and Peacock Tails by Betsy Franco.
Definitely a great book for a multitude of lessons! I ordered mine on Amazon.
And I, for the life of me, cannot get Blogger or Picasa to let me turn this crazy picture the correct way. But it's a really pretty one so try not to get a crick in your neck! This child completely got the whole complimentary colors concept - blue and orange!! Doesn't hurt that we're in the South and she's probably seen War Eagle and Gators aplenty- ha!!

Rock On!!

Last year our Father's Day gift to all the men at church was a little "Our Dad Rocks!" paperweight that the children painted at Art Camp. They were hilarious. Some were pretty accurate - children are so honest. We got a lot of details about the dads and their hair or lack there of- ha!!

We decided that not only do dads rock but "Our Family Rocks!" so we made family portraits at art camp this summer. 

We painted a scrap board and some smooth round rocks. A little skin tone paint and some hair and we were ready for the details.

The teacher used a little Liquid Nails to glue the rocks to the board and then the children, depending on age, used paint or Sharpies to label their families. We put screw eyes and a wire hanger on  the board and we beaded the wire hanger. 

This project really rocked!! 

I made one also because I think my family rocks, too!! 

( sorry - it's so much cuter without the paper strips blocking the names!!)

This was a practically free project- the board was scrap lumber, the rocks were free and if it's a large group one bucket of rocks makes a lot of families or "dad" paperweights. The landscaper near the church donates all the rocks I use all year long but a big bag is only "3 something" at Lowe's or Home Depot. I had the paint, the tube of Liquid nails was a couple of dollars and the beads and wire were hanging around but again very little cost if you had to buy them. This could be done in a classroom for more than 20 students for less than $8.00 if someone  donated scrap lumber. 

These could also be glued to the Dick Blick canvasses and that would be less than 75 cents per child.

So, Rock On!!

The Big Bloom Is Back!!

Remember the giant flower made from found objects that I posted about a couple months ago?? Well, it sits outside my office door and a lot of my art campers just had to have one! So, that's one thing we did this week at camp- we made a really big flower!! We used the same found objects, odds and ends of fun foam, and some 4 foot tall 1x2 white pine. We drilled a hole through all the layers of lids, caps, frisbees, mixing bowl covers and whatever else we could find and used a screw and a wing nut to hold it all together on the 1x2 wood stem. Some made leaves and others tied  scraps of fabric on the stem like I did on my big bloom! It's a big project but really simple and they couldn't wait to take them home, show them off and "plant" them in their yards.  For those that didn't want to plant theirs outside we offered up some recycled family size aluminum cans or coffee cans. They could use Plaster of Paris 

to "plant" their flower in their "pot."

It's fun to change up the scale that you work in. We tend to do a lot of projects with children that fit in the table space right in front of them but they really love it when they get to go "big" like this flower. Here's a shot of them lined up down the hallway on "take-home" day. Love the variety, color choices and the detail they added to their petals. 

A big, fun project for a small investment!

Summer Art Camp Fun!!!

We are having a great time in People, Places and Things Summer Art Camp 2011.

 It's all about color and painting this week. One project that is very simple but is turning out to be so much fun is based on the "Follow The Line" books by Laura Ljungkvist. They are awesome. I found all 3 of mine on Amazon. The books are colorful and fun and focus on "contour drawing" which is simply continuous line drawing. You start a drawing and never lift your pencil or in this case black fine line sharpie- this is sometimes hard for younger children to understand and remember but it is fun to try it. We've had some laughs! First we had the children use liquid water colors and watered down acrylic ( we are using up odds and ends of those little  bottles  of craft paints so when they "seem" empty we put a little water in them and shake, shake,shake and it makes gorgeous "watercolors") to paint very large sheets of heavy paper. We just said to paint large areas of color and let them blend together. We wanted it to be very free and loose. We didn't tell them what they would be used for later. Then we let them dry overnight and the next day we read the books and talked about following the line...

 These are gorgeous- the color is amazing and the book they liked best was "Follow The Line Around the House." But I'm with this artist...

...  I would follow my line to the beach!!

Hope you are having a colorful summer!!

Happy Summer!

 Happy Summer... I'm just sayin' !! 

I'm soooo glad it's hot and sunny! I just saw on The Weather Channel that it was snowing somewhere out West!! I am soooo glad I'm in the hot, sunny South. School is out and we've already had our first big party on our porch!! This sign is hanging on said porch and I feel a watermelon project or two coming up for the kiddos!

We love having cook outs with friends on the porch, going to the beach, reading in the evenings and I love working in the yard planting flowers in the Summer ( the rest of the fam is back on the screened porch for this one!!)...what do you like to do??

P.S. Summer is my catch-up time for scrapbooking, too. 

Or at least I try but I am never "caught up".

One more flower for Mom...

I needed one more  activity for a Mother's Day project.  It needed to be quick and from items I had on hand... and no prep time!! Easy enough... I had all of this stuff close at hand:

Paint samples that I punched into  1, 1 1/2 and 1 3/4 inch scalloped and plain circles

green popsicle sticks - mine came that way or give them a quick coat of whatever green paint you have hanging around

Crayola Model Magic - love this stuff

scraps of green tissue paper

glue dots (for a quick project) or white glue

A bag of Rolos candy - I did run out and buy those!! Yum and the perfect color foil wrapper :)

and some of those little galvanized buckets I've talked about before...

We put it all together and we have one cute flower for Mom.

We chose 2 of the punched circles - any color, scalloped or plain- their choice- and glued them together.  We glued this to a popsicle stick. We cut some green circles in half to make "leaves" and glued those on the popsicle stick stem. Then the best part ( I have found that including an edible component in a project really helps everyone focus!) is the Rolo.  A glue dot on the back holds the candy "center" on the flower. We put a glob of air dry clay in the bucket ( you could use a small clay pot if you can't find the little buckets) and pushed the popsicle stick stem down into it. We crumpled some green tissue paper scraps and pushed them around the stem to cover up the white clay. Easter grass would be cute too but I am quite frankly over Easter grass at this point!!

Cute. Quick. Everyone loved choosing their paint sample favorites. Mom will love it. And there were Rolos leftover for everyone to have one.

Happy Mother's Day!