Georgia O'Keefe-esque

Daughter W. brought home this gorgeous blue flower from co-op class. She tells me that her art teacher, Mrs. W., "does the kind if art that I like best!" This great, huge, close-up flower was the result of Mrs. W.'s lesson on artist Georgia O'Keefe.

Easter Grass Nests

Here is a little bit messy, quickie Easter project. I saw this paper Easter grass and thought maybe I could make cute nests out of it.

Here is the process.

1. Take a handful of paper grass and put it onto a smoothed out plastic sack. Drizzle slightly thinned Modge Podge over it, then gently "toss" it by hand to distribute the glue, much as you would toss a salad.

2. Take a bit of the gluey grass and tuck it into a plastic-sack-lined cupcake tin, making a nest shape. Fill the rest of the tin wells with remaining grass and let dry. Gently peel off the plastic.

Favorite Things-Ten Thousand Villages

While waiting for Daughter L. during dance this Friday (she was taking the Conchetti Level One ballet exam,) I walked downtown and stopped into the Ten Thousand Villages Store. This is a "fair trade" store that sells things made in underdeveloped countries. It is always fun to see the beautiful and creative things they carry. I especially like their jewelry. This week I was looking for examples of art to fit in with our ethnic art series in co-op.

Ten Thousand Villages is one of my favorite things. You can find them on-line at tenthousandvillages.com if you do not have one of their "real" stores near you. Cool stuff!

Quickie Sewing

Daughter M. (9) likes to sew, and is getting pretty good at it. She has hand sewn a double layered doll blanket, done some cross stitch and sewn some on the sewing machine. Last week she wanted a hand stiching project to do while listening to taped books. As it was my resting time too, I looked for something "quick" for her needs. My eye fell on sacks of clothes destined for "give away". I rummaged through and pulled out an old kids long underwear shirt. We cut it off under the arms, turned it inside out, and she hand stitched the cut edges together. Turned it right side out again and...Wha-lah! A small pillow case or doll sleeping bag! Fun! Lots of possibilities here...

That reminds me, Daughter A., who is in massage school this year, used to make Barbie clothes out of old socks. Works great. Cut the ribbed sock leg to length and cut a couple of arm holes. Dress Barbie.

Soap Carving-Good Clean Fun!

(click individual pictures to enlarge)

This week in co-op we were studying Inuit carvings, which were done on soapstone, bone or tusks. The Inuit (meaning "the People") used to be incorrectly called Eskimos, which means "raw flesh eaters." Traditionally, their carvings were stylized, highly smoothed animals, sometimes worn as amulets.

We have been practicing carving bars of soap at home all week in preparation for today's co-op classes. The girls and I ended up doing 11 different carvings. All art classes from 3rd to HS tried out carving today. It made a nice change from other mediums, and it was eagerly absorbed and enjoyed. We went through about 60 bars of Ivory soap in just a few hours!

Daughter W. made the painted bird. She wanted to paint her carving, although I think it will chip pretty easily. She also had to make a birdhouse for him. Daughter M. made the bird and penguin, Daughter L. made the Beluga whale, (my favorite,) the fish and the seal. I did the rounded owl, the penguin and the turtle. The highly individual, single owl on black was done in our 5th/6th grade class by Elliot J., who assures me that "there could never be too much [class] time for art."

Here is the process I used:

1. Tools and materials are simple. Ivory soap (or other), plastic knives, angled craft sticks (cut off end with wire snips), paper plate for shavings, and toothpicks. (See picture.)

2. Simple patterns can be drawn directly on the soap, or can be made on paper. I offered several simple patterns that I drew to speed the process and get directly into the carving. (See picture.)

3. Patterns can be cut out and traced with a toothpick onto soap, or a pattern centered on soap and a toothpick used to shallowly pierce through the paper to make a "dotted line" outline.

4. Use the plastic knife to cut away extra areas of soap, up to the lines, roughly shaping the carving. Do not hurry, do not saw off chunks, rather, shave the soap away in layers so you do not accidentally break off large chunks. You may want to lightly smooth out the word Ivory before you begin your carving.

5. Now look at the carving from all sides and decide what parts need to be narrowed or smoothed (usually the head, feet or tail need to be narrowed looking from the top or bottom.) Reference pictures can help a lot at this stage. To stay in the Inuit tradition, go with less detail and more of a suggestion of the shape of the animal.

6. Begin to smooth with a smaller tool (the popsicle stick or the side of a toothpick work well here), taking down ridges and bumps. Check for eveness (symmetry) from top to bottom and side to side. Correct any disparity by lightly carving and continue smoothing. Do not be in a hurry or try to take too much off at one time. Be careful with fins or flippers or narrow areas. These can break off easily. They can be repaired with water-softened shavings, but it might be better to adjust your carving and go a different direction.

7. Finish with any carved in details you want to add (flippers, eyes, whiskers, scales, designs.) Some instructions tell you to smooth the carving with a water dipped finger, or even run the carving quickly under water, but I found this to be too "soapy."

8. Don't be too discouraged if something breaks or turns out differently than you wanted it to. Artists very seldom get their art to turn out just as they pictured it. Try another one, and it will likely be easier and more fun this time! Remember to sign and date your carving. There was an Ivory soap bust on-line that was from the 1940's!

I Need My Mommy

I cracked and smushed a hard boiled egg for W. this morning. That reminded me of when I went away to college. One of the first mornings there, I went to breakfast in the cafeteria and got a hard boiled egg. I went to my table, sat down, and looked at it and realized that I had never chopped one in half with my knife before. "I need my Mom!" I said.

Other times a grown up woman needs her mom: when she has morning sickness, when she has a newborn, when her kids hit a milestone (graduation, confirmation, prizes conferred, etc.), and when she wants to go on vacation without the kids!

"I am a child again and a longing unutterable fills my heart for mother's counsel." -Laura Ingalls Wilder

More Snakes-Dot Painting

Daughters M and W have colds/fevers, so they had to stay home from church yesterday. Since they also missed co-op on Friday, they missed their art classes, so we did our art project at home. M. did the dark one. W. did the light one.

White Macaroni, Green Bean, and Hamburger Skillet

Prepare a box of Kraft White Cheddar and Macaroni according to directions.
Brown 1 lb. hamburger, drain
Open a can of green beans, heat, drain.

When everything is ready and hot, stir it together. Done and delicious.

I "invented" this many years ago, and it still works great and tastes good for a quick meal.

Last Call for Christmas

Today I found a stray star from our Christmas decorations. I made these stars with my co-op classes, using old Christmas cards. We glued and glittered the ribs of the stars and punched a hole in one point for a loop.

While planning this craft last December, I ran across some old music at the Goodwill store, and decided to do our tree in whites, tans and golds, with lots of "antique " music stars. It tuned out to be a lot of fun and pretty.

Here is the process:

If your music is very old and brittle, you may have to strengthen the paper before folding, or it will break on the fold lines. I painted one side of the music sheet with Modge Podge, and let it dry, before cutting and folding.

I found a great tutorial for cutting five pointed stars at dltk-kids.com under Fold and Cut Star Shapes. There are other sites where you could find instructions, too. They were using their stars for a 4th of July project.

Vary the paper size for a variety of star sizes. Pretty, fun and economical!

Cool Coloring

We have not outgrown coloring books at our house. I find that there is much you can learn artistically by coloring. You can practice shading, using color throughout the picture, contrast, monochromatics, neatness, (small muscle motor development, stress reduction), etc.

My friend Ana, who also teaches art in our co-op (and has a Masters degree, I am proud to say) is a fan of coloring, too. Last year she taught several of the classes "advanced coloring" with Prismacolor colored pencils. These are blendable (by layering) colored pencils and so important to a quality finished product. You do need to look for them on sale (sometimes found on e-bay!) or get ready to take out a small loan to buy them! Some art/crafts stores do sell individual colors, so you can inexpensively replace much-used colors without buying a whole new batch. For older kids, they are worth the cost. Our oldest daughter colored right through high school and did some beautiful things.

My girls all love to color while we do our (semi)daily read-alouds of literature. Our favorite coloring books are Ruth Heller's Designs For Coloring. Right now we own Geometrics, Snowflakes and Cats. Heller also has picture books on grammar. The pictures at the top of this post have a photo of the Cats coloring book and three of the pictures that our Daughter L (13) colored.

Other coloring books that we love are the very reasonably priced Dover Coloring Books, Historical Archives series and Dover Stained Glass Coloring books. Markers used on the stained glass vellum paper makes them beautiful to hang in a window. Use care when coloring these-it takes the markers some time to dry and they smear easily. Artist Friend Ana says that you can layer markers while still wet on the stained glass book for shading. We have not had a chance to try this yet.

A new favorite coloring series is Perplexing Picture Mazes-Conceptis Puzzles by Sterling Publishers. sterlingpublishing.com/kids These mazes create a picture when you have finished the maze. This type of maze was invented in Japan over 20 years ago. We only have one book of this series, and would like to find more. We found ours at Barnes, but have not ever found them again anywhere, so you may have to order online. Our 13-year-old loves these. She enjoys the maze, then enjoys coloring the picture the maze makes. All of these resources (except maybe the Stained Glass books and markers) are also great for car time.