Art- Sewing Purses!

I have been teaching a sewing class at our homeschool co-op for weeks now and yesterday we finally finished our purses! I am so proud to share what these girls have done with you! We got the patterns from a book called I made it Myself which has tons of cute craft ideas for young girls and teenagers...

 

Aren't they all so adorable? Most of these girls are around 8 years old, they did a great job!

Busy and Beautiful Art

This week we have had a lot of fun in art! We have had a lot of snow, which has led to a lot of cancelled activities and dissapointment. To counteract this, I have tried to plan lots of crafts and fun to keep the children entertained.

First, we have this cute snowman activity that I printed for Alex from Erica at 

Next, we made some wonderful Disney princes hair clips. I posted the link to these wonderful printables earlier this week but I will share them again. I am super proud of these. Isabella took them to co-op yesterday and all of her friends adored them! They are perfect for the princess in your home! What we did  instead of what the instructions say, was to hot glue the flowers on to metal clips.

Disney Fairy Flowers

The last thing we made for art this week was a rocket ship sticky mosaic. I was originally worried that this might be a little hard for Alex to do on his own, but he didn't need any help from me at all! What a great way to keep him busy while I got some stuff done for once! Money well spent, in my opinion!

Art - Paper Crafts

This week for art we made paper crafts. Isabella found a kit for winter crafts that was half off at Barnes & Noble this week and she just had to have it. Since we were going to be doing a snow unit this week and an Antarctica unit next week I decided to give in.

To me the fun thing about this is that the box is really sturdy and when she is done doing all of the crafts I will also be able to use the box to store and organize school supplies on my shelves!  There are 12 crafts in the box, and they take a lot longer than we thought because this was actually not made for kids necessarily. So far Bella has only made a couple:

The birdhouse is just one craft, but I am showing you the front and the back. The snowflake is actually only half done, she didn't have time to finish it yesterday. 

So, are you interested in making some paper crafts? If so, I found a couple of cool links for some cool crafts for free that you can just print on cardstock at home for your kids! 

http://www.creativecloseup.com/100-exceptional-free-paper-models-and-toys

http://paper-craft-style.blogspot.com/2010/05/free-paper-crafts.html

http://papertoys.com/

There are a TON of things here to get you started, and at every different skill level. Have fun exploring! 

It's a Day late, but it is Art!

This week Isabella made a Cereal Box Collage:

Isn't it gorgeous? It is really easy and fun to make, but it takes a bit of time!

Here is how to make one:

Materials:

glue stick

magazines

cereal box

scissors

pencil

1. Cut a square out of the cereal box, leaving a frame for your picture.

2. Draw a picture inside of your box. It is better to draw a large picture with less detail. Isabella chose a flower.

3. Chose your colors for each part of your picture, including the background and the frame, and begin cutting pictures of these colors out of magazines.

4. Glue down the pictures inside of the areas you have drawn, overlap and fill it in until you have made a collage, but be sure that some of the pictures still show through as recognizable pictures (not just colors). That is part of the fun!

5. Tah Dah! Isn't it gorgeous? Enjoy! 

Also, Alex had his own little art project this week since this activity was too complicated for him. He did do some random cutting and gluing from magazines, but when he got bored of that I got out a stamp pad and roller he had gotten for Christmas. He really enjoyed it! I would recommend this product for any little busy person! 

Organization - Art Projects

For my first blog on organization I decided to tackle the topic of art projects. As home schoolers, we will help our kids create thousands of art projects in our lifetime, and we don't even get the advantage of them being forgotten on the bus!

So, what do we do with all of these treasures? I tried putting them on my refrigerator for about the first month that I home schooled. That was just ridiculous. They kept sliding down to the floor and making me frustrated. Plus, they seemed to be copulating up there or something. Every time I went to get the milk there were 4 more finger-paintings! Finally, after much trial and error, I have come up with a system that works for my family and I am going to share it with you.

1. Don't bother making it if you think it sounds like junk to begin with.

It is one thing to do a coloring sheet or a painting, but if a project is going to be large, bulky, take up shelf space, AND sounds unattractive, don't make it. Every idea isn't a good one, or at the very least, every idea isn't for your family. Only use the ones that are.


2. Display a limited amount of art work for a brief amount of time, then file it away.

In our house we have a designated area where we display our kids art. I use construction paper in a complementary color to mat it, post it on the wall, and leave it up there for awhile until it is time to replace it with the next project.

I eventually want to implement a system of displaying photos like the one that my friend Vera uses. I saw this at her house one day and fell in love:

What Vera did was bought an old frame at a thrift store and decorated it using decopage. She then mounted it on her wall and tapes her kids' art in the middle of it. This particular frame is behind her dining room table, she has more in her school room. She was super nice about letting me use pictures of her frames since I haven't made any of my own yet. Every time I go to her house I see something I want to copy (and usually do).

3. When we are done displaying, we pitch it our file it.

If the project is particularly bulky or otherwise un-storable I will take pictures and file that instead so that I can toss it out. How I store our art is in big three ring binders with clear top-loading sheet protectors. I then trim the art if needed and slide the artwork (or picture of it) into the sheet protectors so that the kids can flip through and see all that they have done, without it being messy or cumbersome. Each child has his own binder, and it has worked out fabulously for us so far!

So, there it is. Do you have any tips on how to keep art work more organized? I would love to hear them!