Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Elephants



For these elephants we used the wonderful ideas and lesson plans from:
Ink Elephant art lesson -  Deep Space Sparkle
Festive Elephants from India - Painted Paper
Indian Elephants - Mary Making

Thank you!


The children really enjoyed drawing these elephants and I love the final results. 






Cheers
Fiona

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Mother's Day presents 2015


Hand painted scarves for Mothers Day
This post is actually over a week late - I usually like to post about Mother's Day on Mother's Day yet we had screen free week last week and its taken me all week to catch up!  Silly how addicted we all are to our screens (well me anyway..)

Anyway I hope all the Mum's out there had a wonderful Mother's Day.  I certainly loved my raspberry crepes and cup of tea in bed, followed by lunch at a local cafe and then my parents and sister around for dinner.  I even had time to lie on the couch and read my book for a while.... It was the first Mother's Day in 9 years I didn't run or walk the Mother's Day Classic and with all the rain I have to say I picked a good one to miss.  Well done if you did it!

I love to spoil the Mum's as much as I can for Mother's Day (Mum's deserve it!) so this year we made the following (over a few weeks of classes):
  • Hand painted Scarves
  • Marbled Notebooks
  • Portrait CD's 
  • Living Cards
The idea for the hand painted scarves came from That Artist Woman - thank you!  They turned out beautifully.  It was a lot of work though for someone like me who is actually not that much of a sewer or sewist (love this word - didn't know it existed until I looked up if I could use the word sewer (one who sews as opposed to sewer (drain) - A sewist is a new word that combines sewing and artist and is used for someone who creates sewn pieces of art...........anyway I digress).  I had issues cutting the chiffon straight to begin with and hemming 40 scarves took a lot of time (about 20 hours to cut, pin, hem and wash!!).  I loved using watered down acrylic paints rather than fabric paints though as it made the whole thing much more affordable.  I'm looking forward to trying this technique again with glue batik later in the year...





We made the marbled notebooks as I had children begging to do Shaving Cream Marbling (you can read about this here from a previous post).  As always it was lots of fun and the notebooks justified the whole experience.


The portrait CD's idea came from K-6 Art - thank you!  I have mine opened out and sitting on the windowsill and I do love them.





The living cards idea came from Art Projects for Kids - thank you!  This was ideal as I was only half way through my box of 100 CD cases from the portraits project the week before.  I had also lashed out and bought a whole set of Posca Paint Pens which I had been eyeing up for some time (they have so many uses, especially in street art, check out this facebook page).  The two living cards from my children are growing wonderfully on the windowsill and I have to say its a great novel idea for a card with a difference!


A belated Mother's Day to all the mothers.

Cheers
Fiona


Sunday, 3 May 2015

Screen Free Week - May 4th to May 10th

Its Screen Free week this week - we are participating are you?  My children are objecting of course yet I've given them a few weeks to get used to the idea and they have now accepted their fate.

You can read all about screen free week here.

There is a great post on screen free week activities by Zina Harrington on The Artful Parent.  This is what inspired me......

What a wonderful opportunity to get CREATIVE!  Poppy, Leo and I were very creative this weekend when we produced the artwork below for the Kingston Art Blitz - theme this year Fusion...Lot's of fun by the way - you all need to do it with us next year!


Of course if you are reading this post you haven't yet started your screen free week (we will forgive you if you start a little late).  I'm posting this Sunday evening yet it seems to take overnight to show up on the blog.

Of course this will be a challenge for me too - yet I'm quite looking forward to the whole thing.  Maybe I will have some early nights without the distraction of Pinterest!

Good luck to you if you try it!

Cheers
Fiona

PS. My Mothers Day post will be delayed to after Mothers Day due to screen free week (this gives you a chance to open your presents and enjoy some screen free time with your children...).

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there - enjoy your day.