Valentine Collage Heart Banner

I'm not the biggest fan of this upcoming holiday but one aspect I do like is all of the handmade gifts. Similar to Christmas, it seems like everyone goes all crafty gung-ho for their V-Day cards and gifts. Always more thoughtful to send something handmade than store bought! 

It's even cuter when it's something handmade by a kiddo. My first graders and I made some adorable collage heart banners this week for Valentine's Day. I did this project last year with my kiddos but changed it slightly...so it's Heart Banner 2.0! They're super easy to make and work as a Valentine gift or just decoration. 

Supplies:

• assorted small strips of paper (we used graph paper, red/pink construction, shiny silver and pink paper and tissue paper)
• a sheet of normal paper sized 8.5" x 11"
• a sheet of larger paper in a different color
• a sharpie or marker
• scissors
• a glue stick
• yarn or ribbon

1. Cover the ENTIRE front of the 8.5 x 11 paper with the little strips of paper. They can overlap each other too, just make sure they're glued down really well. 

2. Flip the paper over and draw hearts all over the back. They can be the same size or vary. We got about 8 hearts from one sheet of paper.

3. On the larger sheet of paper, draw hearts slightly larger than the first page of hearts. Make sure you draw the same amount as the other page so each heart has a pair. 

4. Cut out all of the hearts! With little ones, it's a good exercise for practicing cutting along a line. Took a little while to cut out all 16 hearts too! This is the exciting part because the kiddos don't know exactly what the hearts will look like when they're cut out! 

5. Make heart sandwiches! Space the larger hearts out with the string on top of them. Put lots of glue on the underside of the collaged hearts and glue on top of the large heart, sandwiching the string between the two hearts. Glue hearts all along the string until you run out of hearts. 

Optional: Have the kiddos decorate the hearts! We had bottles of glitter glue but stickers or markers would work too! Then hang up them up! 

It got a little hectic when we broke out the glitter glue for them to decorate but the kiddos really enjoyed it! Even the boys didn't mind playing with pink paper for an hour. 

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Edit: Hey friends! I also just got notified that I'm nominated for a Best of Blog Awards in the Best of Blogger Shops: Best Arts and Prints category over at My So-Called Chaos! If you feel so inclined, you can vote for me here (I'm in the last section of the voting categories).  Angie is such a sweetheart for putting these awards on, and it's so sweet of someone out there to nominate me! Definitely made my day! 

teaching the Creative Collective

A couple weeks ago, I was struggling to figure out a lesson for my 5th and 6th grade collage classes. They're old enough that I can do more ambitious and challenging projects and I love seeing what they make when given unique prompts and materials. Then during another restless night, I had the idea to borrow Melyssa's brilliant idea for the first prompt of the Creative Collective! A word for 2014!

Not familiar with the Creative Collective? Melyssa over at the Nectar Collective had the brilliant idea to share 23 creative prompts throughout the year to get people inspired to create, share, encourage and see other people's work! Pretty fantastic right? 

So back to the kiddos...I asked them: What word(s) do you want to focus on this year? What do you want to accomplish? How will you make your word happen? Their response was incredible! 

We spent two weeks on this project. Week one was brainstorming their word and creating the background. Week 2 was for finding a creative way to write their word. After their collage was complete, I had them write on the back of their piece a list of ways they were going to achieve their goal. Their words were so varied, it was really exciting to see them share their word and get into the project. I really loved seeing what imagery they used and associated with their words. 

Some memorable words: dog (he plans to save up to get a dog), focus, creative writing, be brave (she wants to stand up to bullying at her school), dare, horses (she competes in equestrian competitions and wants to medal this year), and relax (he said he gets wound up in school so much he doesn't relax at all). I'm definitely going to keep this project around and hopefully find more ways to teach Melyssa's Creative Collective prompts! 

What's your word for the year? My word for 2014: intrepido (Italian for fearless!)

Mini Reed Diffuser DIY

On my trip to Puerto Rico, I brought along my favorite little travel size oil perfume, leila lou. Unfortunately before the flight back, I failed to check if the cap was screwed on all the way. This resulted in my toiletry bag smelling fabulous and my favorite little perfume being left to only drops. 

So, when life steals your perfume... make a mini reed diffuser of the remnants! Or something like that... I've seen a bunch of DIYs lately for homemade reed diffusers and I thought this would be the perfect way to preserve my favorite scent and make my little art bubble smell fantastic! I normally don't care for large reed diffusers because the smell can get so strong but this little mini version is perfect! Plus, it only takes about 10 minutes to make. 

To make your own miniature reed diffuser, you will need:

• a mini perfume oil near the end of it's usable life, about 10+ drops left (the more drops you use, the stronger it will be!)
• toothpicks, 5 will do
• 1/4 teaspoon of vodka
• 1/2 teaspoon of baby oil
• a measuring glass, or anything with a spout to help pour
• pliers
• scissors
• if you do not have a perfume oil bottle you want to use, you will need any tiny bottle and some essential oil

First, prepare your little bottle by removing any labels and cleaning it up. My little bottle had a roll-on applicator which removed very easily with a pair of pliers. 

Next, trim the points off of one end of your toothpicks, about 1/8 of an inch.  

Measure out your baby oil and vodka and combine in your measure cup. Carefully pour the mixture into your tiny bottle. Close the bottle and shake to combine. 

Put your toothpicks in blunt end first and let them sit there for a while to absorb the liquid. Then invert them pointy end first and you're done! Sit back and enjoy the subtle smell of your favorite perfume! 

I think these would make adorable wedding favors or hostess gifts! You can make a lot of them for pretty cheap if you buy mini bottles in bulk. Then just put a cork in the bottle and tie the toothpicks to the bottle with ribbon! Also, do you recognize those little bud vases?

carving and printing...

I've been having the biggest urge to do printmaking lately. It's been years since I last printed anything...to be exact, spring of 2010 right before I graduated. That's terrifying and also saddening how long it has been. I loved my printmaking classes. Lithography and Intaglio with some wood and linoleum carving occasionally. So many hours in those studios and so much fun. 

On my list this year, I decided I wanted to start printing by hand. The other morning while I was swimming I was able to brainstorm some designs I want to carve and try out. This meant also salvaging linoleum bits from previous pieces (I'm so sorry 7 Deadly Sins!) to save some money. 

So far, I have only impaled myself once, leaving a lovely #3 U-gouge mark on my left index finger but I have missed this. A lot. Here's a peek at some of the designs in the works, soon to be in the Etsy shop and my little shops here in town. 

In other awesome news...Remember when I mentioned I had another Pearl Snap related item coming to my shop too? Well, they're here! GOLD PEARL SNAPS!!!! I think they're so ridiculously pretty! They're limited edition so snag some while you can (I already sold 2 pairs in the first hour of the listing being live, woo hoo!)

recycle printmaking with styrofoam boxes

The clean ink slabs...before the children descended...

I started a new after school workshop with Arts Outreach two weeks ago, Upcycle and Recycle Art! An entire class about what I love doing already! I'm so excited about this class, I've been gathering ideas for quite some time and I'm happy to finally be able to try all these projects with the kiddos. 

The first week with the kiddos we made/bound cereal box and paper bag notebooks. I was unable to get any photos from this project but it was a combo of this project I found for the covers/binding with my paper bag notebooks from last year for the insides. I chose this project to gauge the level of the kids...luckily I did too. Turns out my class consists of 14 kids, with about half of them being 6 or 7 years old...with one 5 year old. This isn't to say I don't have a very talented bunch of kids, because I do! This is a fantastic group. But...it does mean that there's a lot of kids that need help/assistance every step of the project...which makes my one hour with them very hectic and in constant motion...

So this week I wanted to try some recycle printmaking using styrofoam to-go boxes!  I may have looked like an absolute fool hauling around 3 dozen styrofoam to-go boxes but it was completely worth it. I was inspired by this post from Alisa Burke's amazing blog! She used scratch board for her project but I thought styrofoam boxes would be a perfect substitute. 

To make these, all you need is: a styrofoam to-go box, an exacto blade, a pencil or paintbrush, paper to print on and ink/supplies for printing (paint would work too).

Cut out the large flat square piece from the base and lid of the box, these will be where you'll be making the designs to print. Using a dull pencil or the non brush end of a paint brush, draw your designs on the styrofoam. The opposite end of paint brushes worked best for my kiddos, it was big/strong enough to make a deep impression but not pointed enough to poke through the foam. Remind your kids that if they want to write anything that it must be backwards ...which can be used as inspiration I guess...

My favorite from the whole day! 

Time to print! I set up ink slabs like I did last summer for my printmaking workshop using foil and tape but paper plates of paint with brushes would work just as well. Ink up the designs enough so that the whole thing is covered but not so much that all the grooves from the designs are filled in. Then flip it over, center it on the paper and rub evenly across the back of the foam. Then slowly remove the foam and voila! A print! We had enough time for the kids to print 2-3 designs and it seems like they really enjoyed it! 

Miniature Bud Vase DIY

Spring is slowly making an appearance here in Southern California. Which means, spring flowers! I love when the little purpley blue Lupin flowers come back. I like to bring them in my art bubble as much as possible so I decided to make some mini bud vases. 

I've been staring at a few tiny bottles and mini perfumes I've had lying around for a while and I've been seeing tutorials all over the interwebs for painting the inside of bottles. So this is my attempt at doing that, only miniature! 

To make these, you'll need miniature bottles, acrylic paint (the fresher, the better!) and a pin!

Gather up your bottles and clean them out! Be ready to smell like a lot of different perfumes... clean with soap then let them air dry. 

Slowly drip the paint into the bottles. It's good to add a pretty decent amount so you have plenty inside to coat the sides. For bottles with a smaller opening, I found that the tip of a normal acrylic paint bottle was small enough to stick just inside the opening and slowly squeeze paint into. 

If it's a thicker paint, you can add a couple drops of water but too much water will dilute the paint and make it hard to coat the sides evenly.

Add multiple colors to get a marbled look! Twirl and rotate bottles to coat all the sides. I even resorted to covering the tip and shaking the bottles to mix the colors. 

If the paint backs up at the top opening (especially with the smaller bottles) I used a pint to push it down farther inside. A pin also helps to pop air bubbles that may surface from shaking the paint around! 

Then let them sit and dry! For runnier paints, I twirled the bottles around while they were drying to make sure the sides stayed coated with paint.

Now go outside and find some mini spring blossoms to fill your mini vases! 

Valentine's Day card

It's no secret that I am a procrastinator...so it's no surprise I ended up making my Valentine's Day cards on the actual day. I've been seeing a lot of projects using masking fluid to block out letters and just recently I used white crayons to mask out hearts with my kiddos on their Valentines. But with no masking fluid on hand, the need to make a more grown up Valentine and time of the essence, I had to improvise...

Enter Mod Podge to save the day! It was a little tricky to write with it since I was writing it with a paint brush but it worked pretty well. Then I just had to let it dry all the way, add a wash of watercolor on top and stitch it to the card. I will definitely be experimenting more with writing in Mod Podge! 

I also decided to carve up a pencil eraser for a quick heart stamp. These are everywhere but somehow I had never tried making my own before. I used Esther's tutorial to make mine and they were really easy and gave the card/envelope a nice little graphic pop!

V-Day: Collage Heart Banner

As promised, here is the second Valentine's Day craft I made with my kiddos this week. This one was with my 1st graders. 

We have a ton of donated paper in our supply closet so I try to use that as much and as often as I can.

To make these, I traced out 8 hearts on a piece of heavy white paper. On the opposite side, I glued/collaged bits of assorted papers ALL over it until nearly all of it was covered and all the pieces were glued down flat. (This particular instruction was tricky to enforce with a dozen 1st graders but we made do.) I used lots of shiny and construction paper with tissue and graph paper on top for some more transparent layers. 

Then I cut out all the hearts and cut some ribbon, about 36" worth. To attach them to the ribbon, I glued two hearts together back to back with the ribbon in between them. I found that the banner hangs straighter if the ribbon is closer to the top of the hearts rather than in the dead center. The banner I made was only 4 hearts long but you could collage 2 pages and have twice as many hearts.  And that's it! Quick and easy collaged heart banner!