Summer ends with back to back painting sessions @ WBCL

 We used the giant sunflowers on the wall for our guide and drew sunflowers to paint. 
We used our fists and fingers for gauging the size of the center and the petals but had to revert to the size of mom's finger for some of the smaller attendees. 
As you can see the outcomes are totally different and the others were just as varied. Hate it when the battery dies on the camera when you have fabulous examples to show off!


The next session started off with a quick slide show of the Talavera tiles and other painted and fired Mexican tiles. Each of the participants (including most of the parents) painted on glazed tiles using Liquitex Glossies paints. I offered up all the leftover tiles I had, 4", 2 1/2", sets of 4 2" tiles and let their imaginations and creativity run wild. At the end of the night I had my example and NO tiles left. 
Such a great variety of outcomes. Most chose to add magnets to the backs but several will sit on a desk or other surface. 

One of the best comments last night was from a parent who has attended with a pre-school child for a couple of years: She did this all by herself and I can really tell how well she does. Kids younger than 7 do attend regularly with parents and really grow in their art over time. 

The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler. The program lets us turn donations and imagination into great projects.

you may also want to take a look at the new Art & crafts database the library recently subscribed to for the patrons. check  the website for details.

Dogs & Cats from paper bags @ WBCL

The heat of the summer and the beginning of school didn't slow this group down in their efforts to customize paper bags into a brood of cute puppies and cats. 


One of the cats has a long tail that we made stiff with a pipe cleaner. I think these were better than the ones in the book and certainly have a great deal more character.


We used the book "Look What You Can Make With Paper Bags" Judy Burke, ed. for direction. 


The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler. The program lets us turn donations and imagination into great projects.

you may also want to take a look at the new Art & crafts database the library recently subscribed to for the patrons. check  the website for details.

Wacky Art in Science is way too much fun

We started the week constructing volcanoes from water bottles, shredded paper, plaster and a great product I found at Michaels called Rigid Wrap. Getting the campers to understand that the paper needed to be fluffed not packed took some doing but soon everyone had their volcanoes forming well. We plastered any holes with the leftover grout from the mosaics and let all of the dry.

We finished the first day drawing the designs on our T-shirts. The imagination they showed was impressive. We used permanent sharpies for the designs which are line drawings. Later we'll flood them with rubbing alcohol to make the watercolor type shirts.

The second day we created shapes from colored pipe cleaners then put them into a borax solution to make crystals. All day long the kids went to the window sill to see if their crystals were making. Some of the kids put too much borax into the jars and caused it to precipitate instead of make crystals. The jars had to be reheated for the kids to get their crystals. What a great project this was. It only takes 5 TBS of Borax to 2 Cups of water and 24 hours. 





There was such a lot of excitement to see which volcanoes would erupt best. It takes 1/2 cup water, 1 TBS baking soda, 3 drop of dish washing soap, and a couple of drops of food color in the bottles to start the project. We measured 1/2 Cup vinegar and held a funnel over the top of the bottle and quickly poured in the vinegar. Red and yellow foam spewed out and shot up to the accompaniment of squeals and screams from all the kids. They decided that the wide mouth ones did not shoot as high as the narrow mouth ones.

We did a section on "what makes it work" taking some electronic items apart with screwdrivers and chisels the using some of the components to make robots and other creations. 


Our last project - making ice cream - was not very successful. It was already over 100 degrees when we went out to roll the cans. we were able to get the ice cream to the consistency of milk shakes but no more frozen. We drank them anyway. 


The Arts mini-camp is held at the Wells Branch Community Library and taught by Dianne Koehler.

Sand painting @ WBCL

It was a full house as it has been most of the summer and the creativity was flowing. Everyone got a sheet of blue paper and 6 colors of tempera paint. We added sand to the paint to thicken it and then painted with the crafts sticks using them to create the textured detail that the sand can provide. 


As you can see the variety of designs was superb and of course several of the parents were asking for paper too so they could paint along with their kids. We get a wide range of ages participating so it is sometimes tough to have projects for all ages but this on was not hard at all. 


The Family Arts & Crafts group meets at the Wells Branch Community Library every Wednesday night at 6 pm taught by Dianne Koehler. The program lets us turn donations and imagination into great projects.

you may also want to take a look at the new Art & crafts database the library recently subscribed to for the patrons. check  the website for details.

More mosaics 2 at mini-art camp in Wells Branch

These are the rest of the project we did this week for the small group at my place. We had fun creating our T-shirts then creating the Talevera tiles and discussing the types of mosaics in the library books I brought.


One of the most uniques projects was our metallic eggs. We looked at the website for the American Society of Mosaic Artists and examined the egg on the site then created our own from a plastic egg and a little base. we used metallic tissue, sequins, metallic ribbon and special jewel glue to do these.


The Arts mini-camp is held in Wells Branch and taught by Dianne Koehler.

More Mosaics at art mini-camp

What a great time we had this week! We met at my place this time and successfully created more than 8 projects. The masks and banners went very smoothly with lots of new ideas for the banners including dragons and more detailed drawings than the 1st time. The kids also learned how to play "telephone" and a couple of other "quiet" games.


Our large tiles were mostly a "crazy quilt" type but we did create a dragonfly, a phoenix and butterfly too. It was fun to sort through the types of materials from broken dishes, glasses, and mirrors to colored rocks and glass beads.


The Arts mini-camp is held in Wells Branch and taught by Dianne Koehler.