Animal banks from juice bottles @WBCL

I think they outdid themselves this time! We were afraid we'd run out of bottles and instead had a few left over. This is not a hard project if you have 11 hands and an imagination to go with them. We cut holes in the bottles so they could be banks but some of the kids got ahead of us and we had to be a little creative to get the hole in.


The bottle is covered in donated fabric with tacky glue to hold it on. A few strategically placed rubber bands hold the neck in place until it dries. As you can see a lot of different animals were turned out from bunnies to lions and more. Lots of the animals required wiskers and a few had to have yarn for hair or manes. All in all it is a project that all ages enjoyed.

The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler.

Art Mini-camp Painting Aprons

Seemed like a good idea to do something a little different with the kids this week. Everyone paints t-shirts and I had gotten feedback from the kids that they were enjoying their Home Depot aprons. I drew the design on the aprons and set them loose painting theirs with the colors they wanted to use. I really love using the SoSoft paints as they spread easily for everyone and don't have to be heat set. We used the scribbles and a variety of other 3D paints for writting names.
There were a few mishaps that we decided we would clean up by stamping over them later in the week. We just put them out on the grass to dry while we painted our tiles then used them the rest of the week.
This was a pretty intense painting week with 9 projects including lots of drawing too. We used the mural on the walls to give us some ideas for designs and the tour of art at the beginning of the sessions for others.


The Art mini-camps are held at the Wells Branch Community Library taught by Dianne Koehler.

Glitzy Summer Visors are the theme @ WBCL

A good sized group turned out to paint and decorate fun foam visors to keep the sun out of their eyes this summer. We are lucky that Dollar Tree had the visors and Target had great sparkly stars and things so this project got a lot of great stuff to use. I even found some paint specifically for the fun foam that worked very well.
Almost everyone decided to put their names on their visors too, a nice personal touch. As you can see the color selection was wide enough that everyone got what they wanted to wear--even orange!


The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler.

Painted trains kick off summer @ WBCL

I found an old book on steam locomotives so we could learn a little about the theme of summer reading this year at the Wells Branch Community Library. One of the most ornate ones was the choice for painting this week. It was fun learning about some of the old trains and the details that were on them that do not appear on anything today.


The metallic paints were a very popular addition for accenting the locomotives.

The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler.

From flower pots to sharks & more at WBCL

I was lucky enough to stop by Michael's and find these great project sheets to put into my stash. When I showed them to the kids and their parents, it was hard to want to make a plain flower pot when it could be an alligator, a shark, or a lady bug. I missed getting a couple of the pictures but this really was a great project and one that the guys got into.

The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler.

Making chenille bugs @ WBCL

These were a little complicated but turned out really well. I found excellent directions and pictures at AOK corral  http://www.aokcorral.com/projects/how2jan2004.htm and we went on from there. Most of the participants were able to create a lady bug or spider without much difficulty. Then the fun began. The spiders needed to have webs and the lady bugs needed fancier feet than just bent chenille stems so tiny sparkle beads became feet. Some of the bugs got fancy eyes too. as you can see from the picture, one of the creations grew into a whole family of spiders climbing into a web.