Spring break art time

We are on spring break this week and the weather has already been crazy! Warm then cold then warm again. Wind, wind and more wind. Today is WINDY!

 

So we've decided to spend the day doing some artwork. Yahoo playing with a bit of clay.

 

Recognize these? They are plants from the Plants vs. Zombies game app. My boys love playing it, don't all boys like zombies? Hopefully I can convince Yip (it's cardboard so of course Yip built it) that they need to be painted and put in the 4-H fair this summer. 

 

 

Yap even tried his hand at making something from cardboard; Yip enjoyed being the "cardboard teacher" this morning. I can't say that Yap had any success...he made something from cardboard but he wasn't too happy about it. Sometimes I think poor Yap just hasn't found his niche yet. He's a Lego freak and he loves to read but those aren't qualities that shine easily in a tiny town where every one is sports obsessed.

I did get him to sit down and plan out a painting for his summer 4H project.

 



 

He loves all things military and war so he chose to draw out a German shepherd. Hopefully we'll get it painted before spring break is over.

 



 

I've been busy doing some of my own artwork today too. It's kind of hard to tell from the photo but I'm creating a giant stencil (3'x3') from laminated paper that I'm going to use on a red burlap aisle runner for a wedding. We'll see how it goes. The wedding isn't until October, which is good, because it may take me that long to get this to work!!

 

My proudest accomplishment of the day though was getting a belt on my Singer treadle sewing machine!! I stumbled onto a sewing store in Wichita over the weekend that services the treadle sewing machines at Wichita's Cowtown.

 

I've had this machine for over a year but with missing pieces. I'd really like to get it working. I was so excited about getting the belt that I totally forgot to look for a needle or the other missing pieces! But I made sure I grabbed their business card!!!

 

Today never warmed up or stopped blowing but I'm crossing my fingers that we'll have at least one nice day this week where we can get out and enjoy the short spring we are sure to have!

 

Please, no more Cardboard!!

Funny story, our town library recently went through some renovations; new carpet, new paint, new lights.

Okay, THAT's not the funny part. The funny part is that ALL the books in the library had to be moved.

ALL. THE. BOOKS. Okay, not really funny.

Whew.That's a bunch of books to box up (with some semblance of order) and then get reshelved again. I helped out when I could. And boy were there boxes. The librarian must have went to every business in town for weeks gathering enough boxes for all the books. Finally every book was out of the library in a storage trailer.

After about a week our wonderful little town library had new carpet, new paint, and new lines....and empty shelves. Time to put back all the books. ]

ALL. THE. BOOKS. IN. ORDER!!!

I helped with that a bit too and gotta say, there were times when I was questioning my knowledge of the alphabet. I caught myself singing the ABC's waaaaay too many times!

As the books went on the shelf the cardboard boxes went to the alley. ALL. THE. BOXES. I thought, eh, I'll make Yip and Yap do some work and help me load up all the boxes into the truck to take to the recycling garage in town.

What was I thinking? Couldn't I remember the MANY times that cardboard boxes have invaded my house? The NO GIRLS fort? The boat, pogo stick and machine gun? Not to mention all the other cardboard creations I HAVEN'T blogged about?

Yip couldn't resist a PILE of cardboard boxes...but I limited it to three! And look what he made.

His cardboard man is about as big as Yahoo.

I gotta say, Yip has skills...a master of the glue gun at such a young age. He's really making me wonder what he's going to create the older he gets!

 But please...no more cardboard. I need a break... for just a little while!

The Spiderman/No Girls/No Shoes Fort

Since Christmas Yip has made good use of his five rolls of duct tape.  I don't keep track but I wouldn't be surprised if he has already used up three of them already! Yip thought he needed a much bigger box than he was able to find in our house or at the recycling garage down the street so he decided to talk to the owner of the hardware store (down the other street), who also happens to sell appliances. 

And a very happy little boy came down the street shortly after hauling a large dryer box! (ahem, I have neglected to mention to him that the hardware store would probably be willing to give him many more such boxes if he would ask.) 

Yip and Yap pretty much have the run of the basement of our house. A lot of times they will disappear into what we affectionately describe as their "cave" for hours at a time. 

Yip and Yap, mostly Yip, has been working on this "house" for about the past week. (And arguing with their little sister to stay out of it! Oh, the yelling that's come from the basement!!) I hadn't really taken a good look at it lately but as I was cleaning their wreck of a basement this morning I noticed some of the details. 

First, a no shoe sign. I guess he really takes pride in the cleanliness of his house. I wish he'd take that much pride in mine! :)

And a window curtain from a t-shirt. He's made a duct tape curtain rod that runs through the sleeves of the shirt then it can slide from side to side. 

This was kind of hard to take a photo of but this is the ceiling of the inside of his house. The black cardboard is a trap door...

....to his attic. It was really hard for me to get in and take a picture of this but sometimes he stores toys and his rolls of duct tape up there. 

This was the newest addition to his house. The spider man mural!! How cool! I knew he was working on this drawing all Sunday afternoon but I just love that he put it in his house and that he built the orange spider web...AWESOME!! 

I'm softening up to the idea of an addition to his house.

Maybe I'll surprise him with a new box today when he gets home from school! 

Art Nights, NO TV!

We have instituted a new rule in our house this school year which is "No TV on School Days". That means no television before school or after school or in the evenings. I must admit I was a bit worried how this would work. Last year I'd regularly allow tv watching while I was making dinner but it never failed to turn into a big fight. "Just one more Mom!" or "It's ALMOST over!". Every school night was full of arguments. I was imagining there would be a lot fights over tv once school started but those only lasted about a week. 

This school year of no television has been so stress free, it's unbelievable! The boys don't even ask to watch television during the week. They do REALLY look forward to Friday nights though when they know they get movie night. Of course the lack of arguments might also have something to do with another change we've made in our school week routine; ART NIGHT.  After dinner on Wednesday nights the kids and I started meeting around the dinner table to do some kind of art. Some nights we would have a theme. For example, in October we did some creepy, scary art. Another week the boys wanted to do something with clay but most nights it's an art free for all. They can do any kind of artwork, painting drawing, building, Legos, as long as it's art. 

Lately though art night has kind of branched out into whatever night they want to do stuff. Which is GREAT! The kids know that television is off limits during the school week but the art supplies aren't. We go through a LOT of paper and a LOT of tape and we make LOTS of messes but I'm really okay with that. 

Yip even had a night where he came up with costumes for his thumb! These were outfits for his thumb "wrestler"! LOL!! 

I've been so happy with how the boys creativity and imagination, problem solving and analytical skills have seemed to blossom this year and I think it has a lot to do with limiting tv and never running dry on art supplies. 

Aren't making messes great?! 

My Artistic Recycler

If I had my way the summer would have been filled with art projects that my boys and I did together. 

It wasn't. 

Instead this is where Yip spent most of his time.

He was constantly found on my laundry room floor he was constantly spreading out the recyclables, cutting and taping and in some cases coloring. 

A motorboat...from a beer box.

And here he's posing with his cardboard pogo stick (left) that he was inspired to sculpt after we stumbled on some images of cardboard sculptures by Christ Gilmour. After Yip built it he emphasized how it was just a "sculpture" and it really couldn't be played on. He was quite serious, as though I couldn't figure that out. 

And then there's the machine gun. See the cardboard that has round indentations? Those are his bullets and he pulls them through the hole just like they'd go through a real machine gun. 

But then....then there are his Wolverine claws. 

I think he's tried making 4 or 5 different versions of these over the summer but THESE were by far the most successful design. He has since learned the meaning of the phrase, "Trial and Error". 

The art teacher in me would have loved to spend the summer in art museums on art drawing walks or doing fabulous huge projects with them....but I'm glad I didn't push it. Because watching his creativity and problem solving grow over the summer has been a real joy and I know it will serve him much better than any art project I could have forced on them! 

Besides he's made buying Christmas gifts really easy for him this year....

DUCT TAPE!! 

Babylon!!! The Vacation Bible School Mural

Right after we returned home from our Indiana vacation in May I got to work painting flowers and vines....

....in preparation for our Vacation Bible School's theme, Babylon: Daniel's Captivity!

Behold!!! The Hanging Gardens!! 

I couldn't get a good picture of this before know because I had to paint it in two separate pieces in a pretty small space. It measures about 21 feet long and about 6 1/2 feet high. 

This was soooooo much fun to do!!! 

And I'm really proud of it considering how much time I put into it. 

I could do this for a living! I just love to paint BIG! 

The woman in charge of VBS already has a backdrop theme in mind for Christmas!! HA! Don't be surprised if it's done by Halloween; I really love painting this kind of stuff! 

3D, Cardboard, Texture and Buffalo...and paint.

I follow a lot of art teacher blogs. Not that I'm teaching art right now (*sniff*) but I really enjoy looking through some of the great art projects other teachers come up with. And in the case of That Artist Woman's Mixed Media Owl project, I am sometimes inspired in my own work. 

I started off by highjacking a tube of DR's liquid nails out of the garage and smearing half the tube onto two old canvases (I'm still working on the second one). Then I added some texture with some bits of wood and stuff while it was still wet. At this point I had a VERY vague idea of what I was going to create. I decided to just go with the flow and have fun. 

That Artist Woman used wall spackle but I was too impatient to get started to go buy some, so I just searched the garage for something that would work. After the liquid nails dried (geez, hope DR doesn't need it for anything) I painted up the background.....sky, grass....

...and then I cut out a few pieces of cardboard and painted a few of them like some funky clouds and glued them on.....

...and the others I cut out and painted up for the buffalo and the grass in the foreground. 

It isn't a great painting by any means but it was a lot of fun painting on texture and adding a three dimensional element. If I ever get back to teaching this is definitely something I would do with my students. 

The second textured canvas is coming along and it wilder and crazier and has to do with dragons! I'm hoping to get that one done to share with you in a couple weeks. 

Marker Monday - Extra Large Painted Cardboard Building Blocks

Yahoo and I raided the recycling center a few weeks ago for cardboard boxes.

And we painted.....

....and crawled....

...and climbed....

....and stacked and knocked over and stacked some more.

I think we need more boxes.

Doesn't the old saying go that all kids need to have fun is a box?

Yep, we proved that one :)