Shell Tree

Was thinking I wanted to decorate my tinsel tree for summer, and what better summer ornament than shells. Drilling holes was a little tricky, a broke a few. I then added a little ribbon bow to hang. Voila.

Art Easels

I've been to the beach, but I've also been blog hopping, getting inspired for art camp. I think we are going to try our hand at weaving and also making art easels out of craft sticks. I've been on a craft stick kick lately. There are so many things you can do with a craftstick, they are so handy.

Mobiles

OMGN- I found the coolest mobile project at plumpudding art blog, I am prepping for something similar for art camp. Can't wait to make mobiles with my camp artists. But before I do this I wanna head to the Orange County Museum of Art, in Newport Beach and see Alexander Calder's mobile exhibit. Maybe I'll get a chance over the weekend. When I was in D.C. in March, the National Gallery of Art had a whole room of Calder mobiles and the coolest part about it was seeing the shadows that the mobiles created on the walls around them, and how they moved and changed depending on the way the mobile moved.

The Calder exhibit is at OCMA until Sept 4th. It's open Weds thru Sunday 11-5. Let me know if you see it and what you thought.

thrift find

One of my favorite things to do is wander through thriftstores looking for hidden treasures. I was in the Salvation Army yesterday and saw this painting by the artist McCaine. I was drawn to it, something about the stylized depictions of the elephants, especially the baby one. I passed it up because of a small tear in the bottom part. I went home and looked the artist up and got little info on him, except he was from the midwest and painted for aaron bros. in Palm Springs in the 60's and 70's. Been thinking about the painting ever since I saw it, there's just something about it, so I went back today and talked the price down cuz of the rip. I now own an elephant painting, and I really like it.

card catalog decoupage

I was blog browsing this morning and I really got inspired here. Sara has a great house that she has decorated with funky patchwork and bright colors. I was inspired to collage decoupage my card file that I have had for a while. I got it free from the library a few years back but it had an unfinished top that I never knew what to do with, but now I figured it out. Thanks for the inspiration Sara.

Spaghetti Dogs

We made spaghetti dogs tonight, just had to try them after seeing them in a couple of places on the internet, including here. Henry helped thread all the noodles into the hot dog chunks. I also made brocoli and a cheese sauce to go on top, but the kids liked just parm cheese on top, and they ate it all.

Summer Art

This is a great project for the end of the year or the beginning of the school year too, when your feet have gotten so used to wearing flipflops and you have to put your school shoes back on. But, who's thinking about that now? We have the whole summer ahead of us.

Pablo Picasso's Summer Bouquet. I usually teach his hand with bouquet in springtime, but look, he has a summer bouquet too.

FYI- I'm teaching an art camp, a mixed media art studio in fact, from July 5-8th. It's from 8:45-12:15 for artists going into 2nd-5th grade. Let me know if you need more details

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, let's take a day off and go to the beach.

Found a good project for all those popcicle sticks that I have received as donations over the years. I did this project with my kinders yesterday, didn't have my camera yesterday, so I didn't get any pics of their self portraits as artists. I think they spent more time on the artwork inside the artwork, and ran out of time for their art studios. We talked about how we all art artists and I hope they will continue to create over the summer.

Jr. High- 1 point perspective. Kady, gave everyone in her class a building/business. My art museum is cut off, it's over on the left.

And, another collage self-portrait. This is one of my favorite projects. It's just torn magazine scraps and a glue stick. Make sure you have a lot of magazines with skin in them.

I've been experimenting with foil tape. My elementary students have been making crosses, using the foil tape on styrofoam plates and coloring with permanant markers. I tried a frame and it was a little more difficult than the cross, maybe the jr. highers could pull it off.

And the ugly dolls will be going home soon. It's been nice to have them in the window of the art room. I will miss them. They all have their own personality and they are so ugly they're cute. Bye Ugly Doll family, have a nice summer.

Life is like.....

These are for a challenge I did on the artist's nest. We were to come up with a saying that started, Life is Like....... I guess I was thinking life was pretty sweet, cuz I came up with it being like a cupcake. We made a tag, a skinny page, and envelope and a postcard. I painted the cupcakes and added clear glitter. The life word was cut out in a template and then spray painted, the rest was pretty much collaged and stamped. What's your life like?

Torn Collage

My jr. higher's are working on torn collage self portraits. This one got finished today and I really like it. I snapped a quick pic as he was walking out the door. Good job Eric.

For the love of pete. I couldn't get my kiln fixed before the end of the school year and the kids have been questioning, when? when? So now that there is 9.5 days left of school, when is now. We've started painting our cupcakes, and I have warned them they are very brittle. So be careful. Only one casualty today, and I dropped it myself. Good going Mrs. Lee.
I think this one is strawberry with white sprinkles....
Bubble gum with a cherry on top.....
Tops and bottoms......