School Holiday Workshops Wrap up....

Did we have fun creating in the past school holidays or what!!

The kids are back at school and its now time for me a have a quick breather before diving into my term classes starting next week.....

There is no better way to get excited about art than by reliving all the fabulous art work produced during the school holiday workshops... The kids that came along were just fabulous - well behaved, polite, enthusiastic and so so creative!

Here's what we did:

Gingerbread Houses....
Yum Yum Yum... 
Can you believe we still have some left in our house..

Monsters....
I thought I took photos yet I can't find them yet I can tell you the monsters produced were so so fun!

Science Art....
Lots of bubbles, mess and fun.  Again no photos sorry - I know this one was a little chaotic so maybe I really did forget.  This class is always such fun and oh so messy - lucky for the parents I get to clean up the mess not you (unless your children convinced you to do all the experiments AGAIN since I gave you the instructions....)

Turtles and Seals in Watercolours....
These are so colourful - love them as always!  

Pottery....
Not many photos of the lovely time we had at this workshop.  A big thanks to my Mum who came along and helped.  The children had a wonderful time experiencing the pottery wheel and making some of the most amazing things out of clay.

  
Cakes, Desserts and Gumball machines...
This workshop made us all a little hungry.  Sorry no pictures of the deserts made out of air dry clay. The rain arrived and everyone skedaddled.

Mosaics....
I always want to keep the mosaics after grouting and not let them go home - I love them so much.  An amazing job done by all.  It was lovely to see parents and children working together on a project.

Painted Pandas......
I'm amazed at how different every single one of these is.  This was a lovely morning with a small class and lots of fun experimenting and painting away.

Keep creating till next holidays!

Cheers
Fiona

Gingerbread House & Cookie Decorating

I just spent a fabulous Saturday helping 23 children decorate 23 mini gingerbread houses.  Yes......that means I baked and assembled 23 gingerbread houses.  Mad!  We also decorated over 100 gingerbread cookies!  It was certainly one mammoth baking week for me.  Here's some pics of the assembly...

Here's some of the cookies and gingerbread houses ready to decorate:

Fondant and lolly bowls ready to be used:

 

Most of them completed (the kids were off having morning tea whilst I took this photo):

Some decorated houses and cookies:

All of the children did a fabulous job - well done.  I wonder how many will last till Christmas day????

A few hints if you are attempting these yourself:

• I made my own templates out of cardboard first, assembled the house in cardboard to check it worked, then cut around these (if you can purchase cutters that would be a whole lot easier!)
• Use royal icing to stick your house together and attach the lollies
• Assemble the walls first, wait until the icing is hard, then do the roof (I waited a day in between)
• Prop the first wall up with something (I used a cup)
• Any lollies will do.  If you have a large group like I did you can separate the lollies into bowls so everyone has the same.  If they need more of something they can trade with someone else at the table (interestingly most kids had lots of lollies left that they didn't use).
• I also gave them little balls of green, red and white fondant to make extra things with.
• Put the royal icing in small zip lock bags, squeeze to a corner and snip off the corner.  The children can use this to "glue" on their lollies.
• Add snow by using some runny icing (just mix icing mixture and water together) and sprinkle dessicated coconut on top
• Wrap with cellophane will make them keep for longer (and protect from flies and ants)
•  An easy way to decorate cookies is to cover with white fondant and then draw on them using edible markers.
• Use pieces of cardboard covered in foil as boards.  Get the children to decorate the board as well.

 Merry Christmas Everyone!

Cheers
Fiona

Pinch Pot Ceramic Animals

I so love how these turned out.  I wanted to keep every one of them and have them as a cute little animal feature in my garden...

These were actually quite easy to make.  You just need to make a pinch pot, use some extra clay to make a small ball which is squashed to make a head.  Then add ears, eyes, legs etc.  I let the children choose which animal they wanted to make, yet gave some examples of easy things to do.  You want to minimize small thin bits that are easy to break.  Remind them about a gazillion times to scratch and attach so those cute little ears etc don't fall off.

Can you believe that most of these were made by children ages 6-9??

We made and painted these all in one lesson.  The wet clay was painted immediately with under-glazes.  We went back to them a week later just to touch up any bits where the glaze wasn't thick enough.  These were then fired, clear glaze added and fired again.

I snapped these pictures pretty fast as they arrived the last lesson of term and people were very eager to take these beauties home.

Ohh just so so cute!

Cheers
Fiona

Reindeers

Hi,

In the Christmas Spirit we produced these very cute Reindeers a few weeks ago. 

These were inspired by a post on ARTventurous which includes some fabulous instructions on how to produce them - thank you!  My only change was to use liquid watercolours instead - I'm sooo in love with these! I also added some glitter to my green.  We also completed them in one lesson so no time for additions of oil pastel later.  I loved the results so much I even got my art club kids to produce them at school.

We also produced some fun Christmas decorations....

Cheers
Fiona