Woodsies bring out creativity at WBCL arts & crafts

Add bright colored markers, lots of little wooden shapes (some with holes and some without) and glue to bring out the creativity in everyone. We hunted down the very best shapes and gave them into a very colorful necklace to wear, a bookmark to use in their books, or just a cute shape to hold. Squeals of "elephant" were heard at one point. Many of the younger kids did great stringing their shapes on the plastic cord (of course someone had to hold on to be sure the shapes did not fall off the other end!) I have lots of the wood pieces left over so am already dreaming up projects on how to use them. If you have any ideas, let me know and I'll add them to my list.

Maybe we were a little more relaxed this week. Summer is winding down and some of the kids are now back in school so a much smaller group attended. Two of the group came wearing their custom made "art aprons." Finally no tickets were needed to get into the room.
Thanks to the Wells Branch Community Library and our wonderful donors for making this program possible for the community.

Families decorate minibags with jewels at Wells Branch Library

I am totally for this easy and popular project! I also am in love with the Dollar Store for stocking the bags and the catalog site where we got the jewels in bulk!! we were not at capacity last night but we were really close as we have been all summer. As you can see the bags are not big but the effect certainly is. The kids and parents used jewels, sequins, glitter glue and scribbles paints to decorate the bags. Two moms opted to get a ticket so they could do their own bag. Of course most of the boys bailed as this looked too much like a "girlie" project to them. The ones that stayed made the bags into something anyone would love--who could argue with a dog or a brontosaurus on the bag? I hadn't planned to put out the scribbles but the glitter glue was not enough to satisfy members of this crowd--the need pink and other colors opened our cabinet to satisfy the artists. Some learned a lesson on the squeeze paints--if you squeeze hard enough, lots comes out! I only wish I had time to do the projects with them and I imagine the same is true of my helpers.

Futuristic art & mosaics at art camp

The mosaics as always were a "smash" hit! we set the broken dishes, glas beads, and tiles into a glue/plaster base on the back of a tile. Makes for a safe adhesive for kids and the back of the tile being unglazed is a great surface.
The futuristic 3D pictures got off to a slow start with each camper imagining themselves 200 years into the future, but once they got started the pictures really built up. The most elaborate included a playground complete with futuristic creatures to play on it and a home entertainment area with a swing under a foiled umbrella and a TV viewing platform with a floating chair. Another imaginative camper had a variety of wild colored futuristic caterpillers with fuzzy feelers. There was even a car with golden coils of exhaust flames curling behind it. What a great way to end the summer! Great activities for the room at the Wells Branch Library.

Painting tiles @ Wells Branch Library

What do you get when the fridge magnet is the art? We set out to make great magnets to hold the other art and notes that go onto the fridge. We used a set of 2" tiles and glass paint to create a variety of great magnets. Great thing is the paint sets totally in about a week so no baking is needed. Some of the artists did a design that spread over all 4 tiles, others did individual tiles. One was going to become a going away gift for a friend to remember her with. Our egg cartons are doing great as disposable pallettes. Now if they can only create enough stuff to hang under the magnet.

Art camp day 2 tackles recyclables WOW!

I have to say that the results from these kids were nothing short of spectacular! From a fully functional slide with a catch basin to a go cart and wirey hammer the class was not short on anything but time. We had plenty of robots with metalic hair and mustaches. It was definately lots of fun. It is hard to match their enthusiasm over the things from our recycling tub--the squeals were those generally reserved for ice cream, not a piece of styrofoam!

The rest of the day we painted--great examples of "Starry, starry night" and a good start on visors to complete the day. Lots to do in only 1/2 a day. Great activities for the room at the Wells Branch Library. Thanks to them too.

Art Campers draw their Picasso face

What is the thing you look at most frequently and cannot figure out what it looks like?? It is your own face! The campers got to do this 2 times then add colors to it. First we drew ourselves as we remembered what we looked like--it was hard to get face shape and features--everyone wanted to look at a mirror. Then we did a second drawing looking into a mirror. Now the
dilemma was how to draw a nose or ears--how to make the hair look right--the older they were, the more cautious they got. Last we got out the colored pencils and finished the portraits in "our" colors much like ones from Andy Warhol that we looked at in our art survey at the beginning of class. Lots of the drawings really looked a bit like the students. They did a good job.

The 1/2 day art camp is held at the Wells Branch Library

Art camp day 3 Basket weaving & fabric art

Wow! were we busy the last day of this camp. After looking at a number of basket examples we got out the fabric bins and began a 3D seascape picture. The instructions were to include a cliff, a boat, the sky and use a variety of materials on the table including shells, mosaic tiles, wood sticks, sandpaper, and fabric. Most of the campers drew a design then added their elements for some pretty great results.
Our last project proved difficult for some in the beginning but soon we had 16 woven baskets using plastic containers as a frame. I kept hearing "over and under" chanted by the kids as they mastered the technique. We found that the fluffy yarns we most wanted to use hung on everything and were the most difficult to use. The boys didn't want pink yarn on their baskets and opted for another shade of blue. At the end some of the kids embellished their baskets with a few feathers like one of the baskets we studied earlier.
I even got a group shot of some of the T-shirts we painted yesterday. The 1/2 day art camps are at the Wells Branch Community Library.

Art camp day 2 painting t's, quilting & paper weaving

We were so busy that I got no pictures during the day. We looked at lots of quilt examples and examined the embroidered and 9 patch quilt I brought. Each one of the campers sewed a single block and learned how they join together to make a quilt. Most of the campers had never held a needle (including one of the assistants) but that didn't stop them. We went on from quilting to paper weaving using old bookmarks we cut into strips. The concept of alternating strips is hard to explain but once the kids began to see the "over and under" "make them alternate" method, we had a pretty good time. I have to say that the desire to make the strips match was hard to overcome for some of them.
We painted T-shirts using a variety of tools--sponges and stamps, stencils and sponge brushes. Each person decided on their own design and colors and off they went. My plan was to use the fabric medium--never happened. We did finish some of the designs off with glitter paints which is always popular. My assistants did their shirts the night before to have an example to model.

The 1/2 day art camps are at the Wells Branch Community Library.

Pop up boxes

Most of the kids in Wednesday arts & crafts class at the Wells Branch Community Library were not sure if they had ever seen a Jack-in-the-box but they sure got the idea. They cut and folded their own boxes ( with just a bit of help from moms), then drew animals and other things to pop out of their boxes. They learned paper folding for the spring and many of them just had to decorate the outside of the box too. Maybe sometime we'll have to make gift boxes out of pretty paper!

Art camp 3 Gourds & Pottery

As you can see it was a busy creative day for the kids. First we took an computer tour of a variety of Native American designs on pots and baskets identifying the elements of the designs--was it a person, an animal, or something else? We talked a bit about how using differing shapes of gourds and decorating them would have happened. The kids drew the designs on small gourds, scribed and stained them and accented them with markers. My teen assistant used the wood buring tool to put a small leafy vine on the side of most of the gourds for the kids. We had lots of eagles, geckos, snakes, suns and arrows.
Next we got into the clay to create pots with shell and bead decorations. The one table made cups with handles and even a double spouted "loving cup" like we saw in the slides. The older kids created bowls and baskets with lots of shell accents, while the youngest campers all started with coil pots and completed them with shells, beads, fun foam and wire accents. They really worked hard to make these their own.