Busy, Busy, Busy

Well I have been neglecting this blog haven't I?  It always seems to happen at the beginning of the school year!  I have been very busy with my classes and have been feeling incredibly exhausted!  The little girl has been sucking the life out of me I guess!

I hope you are doing well and enjoying the changing of the seasons.  I am so excited for fall...I just love cooler temperatures, honeycrisp apples (I bought some already!) and pumpkin spice lattes!  YUM!


I just wanted to stop in and say hello and that I have not disappeared off of the face of this earth!  I will be posting more soon, I just need to get myself organized! 

I will leave you with this wonderful, oldie but goodie song that I have loved for years.  I just found my Mazzy Star cd and was so excited to hear Fade Into You again!  Makes me think of my high school years:)

Well I am off to do some school work, talk to you soon!

Nursery Artwork

Right now I am working on some artwork for the nursery.  I am going to stick with light purple, light yellow, white and green.  I don't have much progress done but I am hoping to work on it this week.  I will post the finished results!

We got our crib bedding from Land of Nod and we just love it!  Her room is pretty simple so far but I am sure we will find more things to fill it up!

Hope you had a great weekend!  It went so fast didn't it?  The husband and I just relaxed and went out to dinner and grilled out.  It was beautiful weather in Ohio and I can't believe that in 3 months it will be almost December!  I can't even think of snow right now!

Jack Henry also had a great weekend.  He hung out with us and sometimes I found him looking very pensive.

I wonder what he was thinking about?!

Candy Corn and High School Art Projects

That's right..I caved.  I bought some candy corn even though it is still August and candy corn is more of a fall thing.  Oh well, it was delicious!

Well I hope you have had a great week!  Sorry I have not written on here in an entire week but I was crazy busy with the first week of school and our open house on Thursday night.  I was at school until 9 pm Thursday!  I think I am going to have some wonderful classes though so I am excited for that!  

I have been working on getting my students ready to start their first project on Monday.  My intro to art students will be doing a project that kind of resembles a patchwork quilt.  Here are some examples from previous years:

 

 

 Basically students divide an 18 x 24 piece of tagboard into a 3 x 3 inch square grid and draw whatever they want on top for their subject matter.  I then have them use at least five different art media (paint, cut paper, colored pencils, marker, pen, etc.) to create an artwork that shows contrast between their subject matter (positive shape) and the background (negative shape).  We just learned ALL about the Elements of Art and Principles of Design so they will also have to make their artwork balanced, unified, show movement, pattern, etc!

Sorry to bore you with lesson ideas!  I am officially in school mode!  I have not done any art for myself this whole week and I am starting to miss it!  Hopefully next week/weekend will be a little calmer!

Meanwhile I am keeping myself sane with music (as usual) such as this lovely song by  Ray LaMontagne.  

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!  I will try to write more next week:) 

Art Bulletin Board Ideas

Wow...very exciting title to my post.  Sorry!  Since school is almost back in session I have pretty much been living in my classroom.  Today I spent the majority of my time working on the bulletin boards in my classroom.  Since my school (and every school it seems!) is on a tight budget, I had to purchase my own bulletin board paper!  My favorite thing to use is colored wrapping paper.  I love Hobby Lobby's huge rolls of fun patterns.  However for my bulletin boards I stuck with white and blue as my main colors. 

Here is the start of one board:

Elements of Art Board:

I  painted the entire border with gold, silver, white and turquoise tempera paint.  It took forever but gives the border some depth I think!  The elements are all made from some lovely stamps I bought.  Luckily I had a student stamp out the elements for me last year so I didn't have to do them again!

Here is my Principles of Design board.  It is hard to see but I listed each principle and put an artwork next to the principle that illustrates it.  I am going to be adding definitions next to each principle as I go over them with students in class.

Notice the Romero Britto artworks I have hanging above the board?!  Kids LOVE his art!

 Here is where I keep most of my supplies.  This bulletin board was kind of a pain to do because I had to stand on the counter and staple the paper onto the board.  Keep in mind I am 6 months pregnant!

Check out all of the NEW labels on my supplies!  So fresh and clean to start the year:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly here is my Old Guitarist  by Picasso bulletin board.  I just got this poster from amazon and wanted to make it a focal point in my classroom.

Well that is about it for today.  I better get to sleep because I have meetings all day tomorrow, a dentist appointment and dinner with a lovely friend!  School officially starts Wednesday.  I hope I am ready:)  Meanwhile, I am listening to this song by David Gray constantly on my ipod.  I am in love with his voice and he is one of my favorite artists to listen to especially around the fall.  Also check out this song by Florence and the Machine.  You might recognize it from the Eat, Pray, Love commercial.  The video is definitely creative and interesting:)

Well have a great evening!  I hope to write soon.  The next couple of days are going to be a bit crazy!

Back to School

Do you like my wall of faces?  This is from my classroom at school.  I have these horrible steel doors in the back of my room and decided decorating it with crazy, fun art portraits would be a nice way to cover up the blandness of the doors. (Do you notice the little red face in the bottom right?  This is from my red cup drawings from last year.  One kid didn't want to draw so this is what was turned in to me...oh my...)

Yesterday was the first day I went back to my classroom all summer.  It felt like I had never left!  Oh summer how I miss you already!  I got some work done but still need to do a ton!  One of my main projects is to make my bulletin boards look fun and cool.  I think I am going to buy some colorful wrapping paper and tissue paper to dress my boards up a bit.  With all of the budget cuts my school is facing, they seemed to have gotten rid of the large rolls of paper I used to use for my bulletin boards:(

I will be sure to post my fun and cool new bulletin board ideas on Monday:)  If you have any ideas I would love to hear them!

Have a great Saturday:)

Organization

Today I am going crazy organizing my closet, my desk, school stuff, etc!  It is wearing me out!  I finally went through my closet and figured out what pants, skirts and dresses will no longer fit me since being pregnant...so depressing!  There is a small amount of clothes that will still fit...so of course I must go shopping! Most of my shirts are pretty flowy and loose so I at least have a bunch of tops to wear once school starts.  Today I had a doctor's appointment and I got on the scale and almost gasped!  Wow..this baby girl is growing!  Everything else was fine at the doctor's which was awesome because I tend to be a worrier!

Anyways here is my semi-organized desk space....I have this overwhelming desire to throw away anything that I have not used in awhile.  Maybe I am nesting already?!

Mr. Jack Henry stayed by my side as I organized and cleaned. 

 

I don't know how he feels about getting his picture taken..he looks a little wary of the camera!

Well I am off to relax after a day of organizing!  Tomorrow I am going to my classroom for the first time all summer!  I must mentally prepare myself on going back:)  My new W magazine came so I am going to lose myself in some fall fashion!

Have a great day!

Blue, Green and Yellow Tree

Newest artwork in my etsy store!  

So how are you today?  I am pretty good.  Just a little stressed out because school starts a WEEK from today!  Ahhh!  I really don't mind teaching, I actually love it at times!  I am just not looking forward to waking up at 5 am!  Oh well, at least I have a job where I get to help kids make art all day!  That reminds me, I need to work on my classroom blog.  I have been such a slacker all summer!  Well, I am off to get some work done for school!  Have a lovely day:)

Butterfly Mobile/Chandelier for Nursery

The husband and I have been working on our little nursery a lot lately.  Even though our daughter does not arrive until December we are just too excited not to work on it!  We are trying not to be too girly and frilly with the nursery, that is just not our styles.  However, one very girly thing I found was this awesome mobile/chandelier from Potterybarn Kids.

It is discontinued though! So the husband and I decided to make our own version for the nursery.  

Now ours does not look exactly like the Potterybarn one, but we love it just the same:)  Here is a close up view of it:

And here it is over our crib:

We got the lovely butterfly decals from NouWall, an AWESOME etsy shop!  

If you would like to make your own butterfly mobile/chandelier this is how we did it:

Materials:

*  2 packs of silk thread (we used Jewelry Essentials brand)

*1 pack of small glass beads (once again we used Jewelry Essentials brand)

*1 needle 

*A circular hoop for the base of the mobile.  (We used the top ring of a lampshade and just cut away all of the fabric-you could also use an embroidery hoop.)

*White sturdy craft paper (I used white scrap paper and painted it white to make it even sturdier)

*A jumbo punch of a butterfly or whatever animal/design you wish to make for your mobile (sadly I could not find a jumbo butterfly punch in the size I wanted so I hand cut every butterfly!!!)

*1 swag hook and anchor to drill into the ceiling (we got ours at Home Depot in the nuts and bolts/hardware section)
*1 S hook to hang the mobile to the swag hook

Procedure:

*To begin I painted my craft paper with designs in white paint.  You could use any color you wanted or you don't even have to paint your paper.  Your choice!

*Next I cut a stencil of a butterfly and began tracing onto the back of my painted papers.  I seriously cut out about 90 butterflies!  If you can find a craft punch to do this that was about 2 inches both ways that would be awesome!

My little butterflies!

 

 

 *Once the butterflies were cut out, it was time to assemble them. 

*First figure out how long you want the strands of your outer ring of your mobile to be.  Cut the silk thread to the length of your choice.  The amount of strands will vary depending on how big your mobile will be.  We spaced our strands 2 inches apart and ended up with 16 strands for our outer ring.

* Once we knew how long our strands would be (ours were about 12-14 inches depending on how many butterflies were on each strand) we began to string our butterflies onto each strand.  To do this you need a needle to poke a hole in each butterfly.  

*We rotated stringing 3 and 4 butterflies on every other outer strand and made them 2 inches apart.  A stopper knot was tied to keep the butterflies in place on the strand.

*At the very end of the last butterfly on each strand we placed a small clear bead to give it a finished look.

*Once the outer ring is complete begin on the inner rings.  Our base let us only have two inner rings.  So our second ring had 5 butterflies and our most inner ring had 6 with 1 strand of 7 hanging down in the middle.

*Once all of your butterflies are strung and hung, it is time to hang your mobile/chandelier.  

The husband did this for me..I am not the best  at hanging things!  He first took 3 strings and tied them into a point at the top of the mobile.  He then knotted it to the S hook.  Finally he drilled the swag hook and anchor into the ceiling.  Finally!  We were done!

So there you have it!  I hope this tutorial was kind of helpful! 

Well I am off to work on some artwork for this nursery!  Have a great day:)

 

Weekend Fun

  My grandma had her 90th birthday party this weekend.  It was a blast!  My cousin Kate took this picture and I just think it completely captures the moment.

Hope you had a fun and exciting weekend!  The husband and I  just got back to Cleveland this evening to find almost all of the nursery furniture we had ordered had arrived!  He spent most of the evening putting the crib and bookshelf together.  It looks great!  Tomorrow our bedding and changing table are supposed to come.  When we get it all together I will post some photos:)

Rainbow Tree

Hello! Here is my latest artwork that I am working on!   It is called Rainbow Tree (because of all of the colorful leaves!) I still have to paint the sides and apply a gloss varnish and then it will be in my etsy store:)  School starts in about a week for me so I am trying to get as much done art-wise as possible.  Once school starts I am swamped!

I hope you have some lovely plans for today!  My family is having a huge celebration for my Grandma's 90th birthday!  My whole family will be in town!  I am so excited to see everyone:)  Well I am off to start my day!  Have a good one!