Another Successful Camp!

Final Recap for 2015 Art, Theatre and Photography Camp!

With not a minute to spare and with the help of my incredible student volunteer Hannah, we pulled the second load of still warm pieces out of the kiln so that campers could take their clay home after the performance. The last thing I wanted was to have to track down campers to get them their clay pieces!!

The project had issues.. but on the whole, how can I be bummed about ceramics created by the campers! If I do a project like this again, I don't know that I will use terracotta. Anyway. as you can see, there were some cool parts of each kids pieces, but the colors were too muted. I need to use vibrant glaze with kids!

Here is a close up of the pieces that Kylie and Lexi created.  The "plaques" were for the kids to put their pictures on.. (we ran out of time..) So we just sent the ceramic piece and their group picture home separate.

How fun is that!  

Anyway, here is what Kylie and Lexi's samples look like fired. This is one case were the more glaze the better!

(I think this is what I will do next year... super simple, roll your slab, decorate it, put your name and date on it and load it with glaze..) 

Anyway,

Here are a few pictures from the last day of camp.

We bound sketchbooks and autograph books. (big hit.. but they kept pulling the pages out of the binding.. gonna have to work on that for next year.)

 

We finished the guitar watercolor paintings. Some of the campers left their paintings simple, others were happy to go that next step and make it more abstract.

 

We signed the autograph books. This was so much fun! The kids LOVED it!

And we showed off our week's work!

Wow. This is that moment when I see the fruits of my labor from the week!

In their art rotations they created a ceramics piece, screen printed, worked with charcoal, drew with watercolor pencils, painted, and bound a book. In a 40 minute segment over four days!

 

Wow!

 

And here are a few pictures of the performance.  104 campers makes for a full stage.

And there you have it. We have already started on 2016 camp. (and we already have people wanting to register! wow!!)

Faux Stained Glass

I'm quickly running through my stash of fun and easy kids activities for church! I'm going to have start branching out and creating new things.. but for now, I've still got a few tricks!

Anyway, last week I had the kids look at the stained glass windows in the sanctuary and talk about them.  We looked a little at the colors, the symbols and all of that.

Then I gave them each a transparency that I had printed a line design onto.  The internet is a great resource for "coloring book" stained glass designs!  I wanted the patterns to be interesting, but not too hard as I have from 4 years old to 14 year olds!

(Side note..it is super easy to print onto a transparency! Just change the setting on your printer to transparency and put it through the side feeder of the printer.)

The kids colored the transparencies with oil pastels.  I use oil pastels because I have them. You might could use crayon.. I'm not sure.

Purple was the hardest color to get to go on smoothly.. for whatever reason. What is pretty cool is that if the kids color a section and they don't like it, they can just color over that section with a new color.

After they finished coloring, I took a blank transparency and sandwiched the pastel between the two transparencies.  I then used masking tape to secure the two pieces together.

And that was it! The kids LOVED them.  I was thinking we would make them to hang at the church.. but they all took them home! We will make some to hang at the church another time!

And that's it. Another super fun and easy craft project for kids!

No Sew Leg Warmers and Gloves!!

Need a fun and cheap project to make with your kids?  Well, how about no sew leg warmers and gloves!!

We bought adult sized knee socks from Walmart. One package of 3 pairs was $4.77 and look!!

Aren't these girls adorable!!

Here are a few pictures of the process below.  

Click HERE to go to a tutorial on how to make your super easy no sew leg warmers and gloves!

Have fun!

Better than Carved Pumpkins!

I did not grow up carving pumpkins. I have no sweet memories of pumpkin guts and Halloween tales. I'm not sorry about that. However, I do want my kids to have a frame of reference when others talk about Halloween, so we participate in the fun stuff and explain to our kids why we don't participate in the rest.

Anyway... since I'm not into pumpkin carving, I looked for alternate decorating ideas. 

I ended up with some WINNERS!! 

For Kylie's pumpkin, I sprayed painted a base coat of silver and then gave her paint sticks to play with. I LOVE paint sticks.

Paint sticks (I use Playcolor) are awesome. The paint dries in seconds and blends and is fun with NO MESS!! And the paint sticks last way longer than you would think, so while it seems expensive, it isn't near as pricey as it feels!

After Kylie painted, we put on the BOO bling that I bought at Walmart. The overall effect was great. And except for me having to pull the BOO off the liner, Kylie was able to do the entire project herself.

In fact, next year I'll not prime the pumpkin first. The youngest child at our little pumpkin party at age 3 painted her pumpkin herself and it looked great on the orange!

Next was Lexi's project. I sprayed it with gloss white as it's base coat.

Lexi decided to do melted crayon on her pumpkin. I was leery as I have seen so many melted crayon projects literally fall apart as the crayon pops off the base. But I figured why not.. the pumpkins were only going to be around for a week, so we might as well try it.

I got out my craft heater and we peeled some neon crayons and she was ready to go. 

The only real issue was that the heater sprayed dots of wax all over the kitchen table. I'd put something down to protect the table next time!

Ten minutes later and we were finished!

Two fun pumpkin projects and NO GUTS to clean up!! That is a win!

Kid Created Artwork and Curtains

Yesterday the little girls and I worked on making custom curtains for Lexi's room. This in turn opened the door for artwork. The girls had a great time and it was really easy, fun and not too messy!

If you need kid created custom curtains, you can see my guide for that... here. You use the same supplies, just trade out the canvas for curtains!

So, here is what we did...

We started with 3 shades of pink, plus glitter paint that we added to each of the colors. I like using 3 shades of the same color for projects like this... when they end of mixing colors, which they will, you don't end up with sludge, you end up with pretty variations of the same color!

 Plus you need plastic bottles of different sizes.

Pour some paint on a paper plate. This makes clean up soo much easier!

Then take a bottle and press it into the paint and stamp it onto the canvas.

 It's that easy!

Just for clarification, Kylie is using a mounted canvas and Lexi is using a canvas panel. Use the mounted canvas as it has natural give. The panel was harder to make an impression on!

We used a cork to make the centers and polka dots.

And of course, a paintbrush. Cause as Kylie explained, it's not painting unless you have a paintbrush!

Kylie's masterpiece!

After Lexi finished her curtains, she completed her painting as well.

I have to say, I love two projects completed with one set of supplies and very little cleanup!
Here is the guide for the curtains should you need it!

How to customize curtains by emilymclemore