Winter Scenes and Olaf feet!!

The past two weeks have been jammed packed with winter fun! I taught the kids how to use three shades of green oil pastels to draw a Christmas tree and create an interesting background like a forest or bricks. The kids loved drawing these and got VERY creative! I was able to photograph a few today, but most kids took them home already! We had Santa in the sky, elves peeking through windows and doing silly things in the room!! 

They added sequins for ornaments, which added a sparkling touch!

Kinder and First grade have been making Olaf feet ornaments! I printed all of their feet with white tempera, laminated them,

then added bows to the top on the girls and bow ties for the boys, pipe cleaner arms, and googly eyes.

Pine Cone Trees!!

 The past two weeks every grade level has been creating some fabulous winter artwork. One of my students, who is very interested in photography brought this fabulous horse to school and asked we could take a picture of Shrimp riding the horse. She spent a few of her recess periods creating the perfect backdrop with butcher paper and some of the glittered pine cone trees! It turned out fabulous as ever!! I love when my students come to school inspired!!

She set up the perfect backdrop for the perfect photo! 

You can see directions here:

Pine Cone Trees Directions

Third grade has had a blast using broken jewelery to create these snowy winder trees full of sparkle and bling! We painted them with green tempera, doused them in modpodge and covered them in glitter! 

After the glitter dried, I poured plaster paris on paper and stuck the trees in the plaster. When you mix up the plaster it is very liquidy, you must wait about 15-20 minutes for it to thicken so the tree will stand on its own in the plaster.

 Shrimp supervised from his easel and chirped orders at the kids!

                                                       We put a tiny star at the top

DeSHRIMPber

We have a new friend in the art room this month! Students have been working on bird drawings and we have a special parrot visitor! Shrimp is my parrot who has been visiting each day to inspire creative minds and model his beautiful birdliness for our project!! 

The kids LOVE him!! 

Silk Screen Printing (Made Easy!)

 Screen printing is a technique that uses a woven material and a stencil to make a print onto a surface; paper, t-shirt, stickers, vinyl, wood, etc. It is a printing method that is very rarely used in the Elementary classroom because the silk screen itself and other materials are very costly and creating a stencil is a difficult process often requiring a blade. 

If you are an art teacher, this is great because besides styrofoam, there are few printmaking techniques that are reasonable for Elementary.  

This year I bought some embroidery hoops here embroidery hoops from Blick for only $2.59 to attempt to make my OWN kind of silk screens!! Compared to the smallest silk screen frames that start at almost $20, this is awesome! 

I bought some white chiffon fabric at $4 a yard and added them to the hoops. 

This project is a great way to learn the process of silk screen!! 

You will need some fine line precision applicators and some Speedball Screen drawing fluid.

 This summer we used the Speedball fluid technique with art teachers to create silk screen prints using regular silk screen units. I just loved working with the drawing gel and screen filler, these were our results. I just needed something cheaper and more realistic for a class of 25+ 8 and 9 yr olds.

To begin, stretch your silk or chiffon fabric over the embroidery hoop and draw your design with a pencil first. Then

Then use the squeeze bottle with the drawing fluid to draw your design on the hoop. The lines print better when they aen't quite as small as the ones on this fish. big bold lines print better than tiny details.

Then you have to wait for the drawing fluid to dry completely. We waited overnight.

When the drawing fluid is dry, you paint the screen filler over the entire screen.

Let the screen filler dry completely, then run the silk screen under water and rub gently with a soft brush. The drawing liquid dissolves to create a stencil of your design!!!  

You can use Speedball Ink or a thick paint to print your stencil. I used Liquitex acrylic paint.  Use a firm straight edge such as a credit card, Styrofoam, or a real silk screen printing squeegee to spread the paint over your stencil

Lift the hoop to reveal your print!!!

You can rinse and reuse with different colors too! 

try mixing colors to teach color theory! 

Good Luck printing! I will post the results when I have done this with my classes! 

Check back on the blog next week to see pictures of all of our Dia De Los Muertos Animals!!! They are super fun, I can't wait to post them!!