Vincent Van Gogh Sunflowers

I have been preparing for my elementary art classes that I am teaching at Sign and Doodle by testing projects with Virginia. This month the kids are learning about Vincent Van Gogh. The first project we are doing is Vincent Van Gogh sunflowers. I found an amazing turtorial on YouTube by an art teacher called Mr. P. 

While we were visiting my parents today, I had Virginia test run the painting. I wanted to see how long it took her to finish. I wanted to see if she could do each step by herself with little to no assistance from me. Most importantly I wanted to see if it kept her interest and if she enjoyed it. I believe I met and exceeded all my goals. She had a great time and the project didn't go to far over her abilities, but still challenged her.

Salt Tray

Today I decided to surprise Virginia with a open sensory play time. I made a salt tray by filling up a old hat box lid with salt and added in a few flat marbles. 

I was curious to see her reaction when I sat it down in front of her and just walked back to the kitchen to clean dishes. I peeked around the corner and she was just looking at it puzzled. Then she stuck one finger in and asked me what it was. I told her a salt tray. Next she asked if she could play in it. I was like yeah! She has played in this tray all day and night. She buried her hand and has played hide and seek with the marbles in the salt with me. This was a huge hit for her and really simple for me to make.

Shadow Puppets: Great for a rainy weekend

This weekend is looking like it may be a rainy day weekend. So Virginia and I are finding ourselves stuck inside. I have been testing a few different projects for my art class. Also trying to come up with fun crafts to do at the Macaroni Kid festival coming up that Sign and Doodle will have a table at. So today I decided to finally try out shadow puppets. I have seen them on blogs and on pinterest and just love them.

Virginia picked out the mermaid. So I googled an image of a mermaid and traced it onto a piece of paper. Then cut it out and taped the paper to a drinking straw. It was that simple. Virginia had a blast playing with it on the wall. I found a card board box and put a white sheet of paper in it for her to use as a theater. She drew waves on the paper to use as a background. Now searching for a princess image as our next puppet.

Silly Monsters

I have been testing art projects with Virginia lately. Planning to use some of the art projects in my art classes at Sign and Doodle this summer. Today we tested the Silly Monster face. This was super easy and alot of fun to see the results.

All it involves is a piece of white paper and paint. I laid the paper horizontal and let Virginia put dots of paint down the middle. It is best to place the dots of paint close to each other.

Next I folded the paper in half and let Virginia smooth the paper out and at the same time moving the paint around. Once she was done I opened the paper and revealed the beginning of our monster face.

We left the paper out in the sun to dry but be sure to place some weight on it in case that day is windy. Once dry I let Virginia decide how many eyes. I cut out white circles and let her glue them to the face. Then I cut out horns and she glued them down. Last we cut out a mouth and teeth and glued those to the face. After that we were done and giggled at our silly Monster face.

Vincent van Gogh…First Self-Portrait

Since I have been hired to teach art classes at Sign and Doodle this summer I have been doing research and trying to come up with lesson plans. One of the classes I will be teaching is Intro to Art for 6 to 8 year olds. I will be introducing them to famous artists. I knew one artist was going to be Vincent van Gogh.

I just happened to stumble upon Small Potatoes blog post on Vincent Van Gogh tonight as I was browsing Pinterest. I loved the idea of doing a self portrait in a mirror. Virginia is starting to branch out with her art and enjoys painting rainbows. But she hadn't tried self portrait. So I didn't know how this was going to go.

You should have seen her face when I told her she could paint on the bathroom mirror and sit on the sink. I think I won mother of the year award right then and there in her eyes. I laid out some washable paint and brushes and a cup of water. I told her she was going to paint a self portrait. This scared her at first but then I broke it down for her and told her to start with her hair and then do a circle for her face. Once she got started she was fine and did the rest with not to much worries. My daughter is a perfectionist and sometimes when things are not perfect she flips out. 

Once she was done painting I pressed a piece of paper onto the mirror and rubbed. She didn't like the way it turned out but there was enough of an outline where we took the paper to the living room and she was able to paint over the outline and make it the way she wanted. Maybe next time I won't rub so much.  And the best part is it cleans right off the mirror with a little window cleaner. 

Overall it was a success and I think I may put it down as a project for my Intro to Art class. 

Colored Ice Balloons

Virginia was highly disappointed when she woke up and found out there was no snow outside. We had just a little snow fall during the night which she got to see and go out in. But by morning it was all gone. I felt really bad for her and wanted to do something cool with her today. So I remembered seeing ice balloons on The Queen Says.

I knew we already had all the supplies in the house. All you need is a balloon, water, and food coloring. Also it helps to be really cold outside or have a freezer. I took our balloon and filled it up with water from the sink. Next comes my first mistake, I took it over to the kitchen table and was going to let Virginia put the food coloring in the balloon. Once I opened the balloon the water went spraying everywhere. I quickly ran back to the sink and let most of the water out and then put the food coloring inside the balloon. 

Next I filled the rest of the balloon with water and tried my best to tie the balloon closed. I did spray water a bit which is messy when it has food coloring in it. But Virginia was giggling the whole time. Once I realized it wasn't cold enough outside for the water to freeze I decided to put it in our freezer. Before I placed the balloon in the freezer I let Virginia feel the balloon and had her make predictions on what was going to happen to the water in the freezer.

Once the balloon was frozen, ( or at least I thought it was ), I cut the top off with scissors and peeled away the balloon. The frozen ball was bright red then I realized the balloon wasn't frozen all the way it had a little leak in the bottom. Lesson learned that I need to leave the balloon in the freezer longer. But it was still cool and left a frozen shell of the balloon for Virginia to explore. She touched it and looked inside and then decided to take it outside to crush. So all in all it was a fun little experiment and just a little messy.

Meet Princess

I love how one blog can lead me to another and then another and I fall upon a new craft idea. This happened today, I was going though my email and looking at all my craft blogs that I love. It lead me to a new blog called Christine Clemmensen. I loved her post on pipe cleaner elves. I liked it even better because I already had all the supplies in my craft room. 

Supplies:

Wooden ball for head

pipe cleaners

yarn

felt

hot glue gun

pom poms

I took the wooden ball and hot glued four pipe cleaners into the center of the ball. My wooden balls already had holes in the bottom of the ball. Then I took the yarn and just started to wrap the pipe cleaners. This took awhile, but I didn't mind I was just watching one of my favorite shows. I kept wrapping until I got the basic body shape that I liked. Next I took the four pipe cleaners and divided them two on both sides for the legs. I hot glued red pom poms on the feet for shoes. 

Next I took a Rapunzel dress to help me measure where the arms needed to go. I took my scrap pipe cleaners and wrapped it and used a little hot glue gun to secure. Then wrapped again to make the arms. And I just bent the pipe cleaners a bit on the end of the arms and wrapped the yarn thick around that area to make hands.

I was lucky and the doll turned out to be the perfect size to wear barbie clothes, but of course my little princess has already requested more clothes for her princess. I did make a simple felt crown for our princess. And I used some of the yarn to make hair for the princess as well. The best thing is my daughter has already determined she would like to put on a puppet show for her friends. These dolls are perfect for a puppet show since the whole body is bendable. Love it!

Rainy Days

So glad we got out to the parks last Wednesday and Thursday. Ever since then we have had super foggy weather and rain. Nasty cold and wet winter weather. So we have been stuck inside for the most part except for our trip to story time at the library today. 

We decided yesterday to invite our friends over for a painting play date. It was tons of fun to see each kid paint and to see the difference in each child. Virginia tends to stick with one or two colors and switches paper often. Maddy tried a few colors and really stuck with just one sheet of paper. Mia got in on the action too, but all the girls quickly decided to go play in Virginia's room by the end of the afternoon.

I laid out a few items for the kids to explore painting with. We had our paint brushes and then I added a comb, cardboard comb, bubble warp sheets, and a net material. They used the comb to brush and create lines in the paint. I loved seeing the texture pattern that the net material and bubble warp created. I believe all the kids had a blast. The funny part was I believe that Danielle and I had more paint on us then the kids and we were not painting. 

Spring Time in Winter

The past two days we have been having lovely spring weather. Temperatures around 62 to 65 degrees all day. I am loving this weather and wish it would stay around forever. But I know winter will peek its head out again soon. So the past two days we have been taking advantage of this spring weather and hitting the parks.

The best thing about where we live is there is tons of great parks 15 minutes from our house. We have been mainly sticking to two parks lately because one has a huge track Virginia loves riding her scooter around. Also this park has a huge football field that allows Virginia and her friends to kick her soccer ball back and forth.

It just amazes me how much she has grown over the years. I have gone from having to help her with everything on the play ground to her just running and playing free without my assistant. Today she climbed up this huge ladder arch all by herself. There was a 2nd grader behind her helping just to make sure she didn't fall. But I was so proud of her. Earlier she was afraid to try it, but I guess the desire to prove to the 2nd grade girl that she wasn't a baby helped to push her along. She was so excited at her accomplishment. It showed me my baby is growing up and that I have to let her explore and try new things and not hover so much around her. 

Thrilled to see that this wonderful weather should be sticking around all weekend long. So we will be park bound each day hopefully. Before Winter decided to show his head again.

Mermaids on Parade

This week was exciting because our library story time was back from break. Virginia has been in love with all things mermaids lately. So after story time when we were browsing the shelves for books when I saw Mermaids on Parade I knew this was a winner. 

Mermaids on Parade by Melanie Hope Greenberg is a cute story of a little girl getting ready for her towns Mermaids Parade. The town dresses up as mermaids and other sea creatures to welcome the opening of the beach and ocean. The whole town marches in the parade and in the end a winner is picked. The illustrations are great and this is where our project begins.

Virginia loved the little girls mermaid costume in the book. The little girl is dressed in a blue mermaid tail and tank top. The tail is decorated with jewels and roses. Virginia asked for her own mermaid tail and I said yes of course. So we stopped at Mary Jo's on our weekly trip to Gastonia. 

I was all set to pick up some simply cotton fabric. But a blue sequin fabric jumped off the shelve and stole my little girls heart. I was a little worried about sewing sequin fabric. But I couldn't resist the fabric either and it was marked down from $20 per yard to $6 per yard. So we got one yard and headed to Maw Maw's house.

We picked up some stick on gems and flowers at Michaels. The next day I took some paper and had Virginia lay down so I could draw a rough mermaid tail. I used this template to cut out the front and back of the mermaid tail. I had planned to use fabric glue because I wasn't sure if my sewing machine would sew the sequin fabric. But last minute I decided to be brave and sew. I cut my fabric front and back and then pinned the right sides together. I sewed just the sides together. I left the bottom open for her feet and kept the whole mermaid tail larger so it is loose for Virginia to run and play in. 

Virginia added the stick on gems and flowers after I was done sewing. I believe the skirt actually turned out great and was alot easiler then what I expected. And my daughter is thrilled to have a mermaid tail to add to her dress up collection.

DIY: Fabric Friendship Bracelet

Virginia for awhile has been wanting me to make friendship bracelets. I even have tons of the strings to make the traditional friendship bracelets with. But I don't know what it is about the traditional friendship bracelet, but I just can't make them. So when I saw a tutorial for DIY: Fabric bracelets.  I knew this would be a great alternative to the traditional friendship bracelet.

We picked up all our supplies at Michaels on our weekly trip to Maw Maw's and used some of our gift card money. All the supplies we needed were in the jewelry making section. I already had tons of scrap fabric to pick from. I let Virginia pick her favorite and then she picked out fabric for all her friends. 

I won't go though the step by step process since LBG Studio didn't a wonderful job in her tutorial with some beautiful pictures to go along. I think it took me less then 30 minutes to complete this project. Everything went smooth I would just say double check your wrist measurement before making that final cut of the fabric. I made a mistake on Virginia's wrist measurement, but I just added some extra jump rings and it worked out fine. 

To end out the night I made good on my promise to Virginia to sleep in her room. I dragged out the air mattress and after failing to figure out how to pump it up we asked Reiggin nicely to do it for us. It was alot of fun and the excitement on Virginia's face was priceless. Then came 1am and I realized that the air mattress must have a link because we were both sunken down in the middle touching the floor. I tapped Virginia and told her lets make the move to my bed. Reiggin was a good sport and didn't mind an extra body in the bed even if she does kick a little. 

Our next sewing project is going to be a mermaid tail to add to Virginia's dress up collection. 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year Everyone! I can't wait to see what 2013 is going to look like for my family and I. We spent New Year's Eve at my in laws having a great dinner and just hanging out. Once we got back home Virginia and I watched fireworks going off in our neighborhood and rung in the new year. Best new years kiss ever from my daughter. Yeah she actually stayed up til midnight. 

One of my best buds from CentralPiedmontMommies Amber did a great blog post recently about 13 in 2013. Basically picking 13 things to do or learn in 2013. I love this idea and have decided to give it a shot. Since I am not the most organized person which should be one of my goals in 2013 to improve on. I am going to pick my goal each month on the 1st. 

For January I have decided to experiment more with my sewing machine. I have not messed with my sewing machine in a long time. I also have a fabric stash that I am hoping to go though. So for January I hope to show you some fun sewing tutorials that I have found on some of my favorite blogs. 

The first sewing tutorial that I hope to try out this week is from lbg studio. I just came across this blog from Project Run and Play another one of my fav blogs. I was browsing lbg studio's blog posts and came across her diy: fabric bracelets. Virginia has been begging for friendship bracelets for her and me and for her friends. I don't know why but I stink at the traditional method of making friendship bracelets. I just can't do them. So I thought this would be a fun alternative. Virginia gave me the thumbs up too so look for a blog post later this week to see how our fabric bracelets turned out. 

Ok well Happy New Year and hope you all will join me in 13 for 2013.