DIY paper bag portfolios

For my art lessons, I was in a pinch as to how to store my 8th grader's artwork for this session. Luckily during one of my restless nights of sleep, I came up with this quick solution using paper bags! It was really easy and immediately solved our storage problem, for super cheap too! 

Supplies: 

• A large paper bag (the larger the bag, the larger the portfolio will be)
• Scissors
• Wide tape (if it's colorful, even better!)

1. Carefully cut out the bottom panel of the paper bag, right along the edge. 

2.  Pop out the side panels so they fold out to the side instead of towards the middle. Squish them flat right along the side panel's middle fold.

3. Run a strip of wide tape all across the bottom edge with half of it hanging over the edge. Carefully fold the remaining half of tape to the other side of the portfolio. Trim the edges if needed.

4. Reinforce the handles with more tape. Now decorate and fill it with all your special creations!

Want some more ideas for how to up-cycle and repurpose your paper bags?

• Paper bag folders
• Woven paper bag handle baskets
• Paper bag notebooks
• Paper bag mailing envelopes

watercolors from scratch

One of the workshops I have been teaching lately is watercolors from scratch! The kiddos and I whipped up a batch of watercolors on the first day and now they're exploring color mixing and painting in their own handmade sketchbooks. Making the watercolors with them was a lot of fun, it was pretty much a colorful science experiment. 

It was also surprisingly easy to make them too. And if any of the kiddos get curious about what yellow tastes like, it won't hurt them! The recipe we used was comprised of ingredients we had in my kitchen...so any accidental or purposeful ingestion won't be a problem. 

To make your own homemade watercolors, you'll need:

• 1/2 cup baking soda
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon corn syrup
• assortment of food coloring

1. Gather all the ingredients and combine the baking soda, cornstarch and corn syrup in bowl. Have the vinegar and a fork ready. 2. When ready, pour the vinegar into the mixture and mix quickly with the fork. The mixture will bubble like crazy but keep mixing until it is all combined. 3. Once it is all mixed, pour the science goop into small containers (paint palette, dixie cups or an ice cube tray work great). 4. Add a couple drops of food coloring to each container. The more drops of color, the more intense the watercolor will be. 5. Let them dry! The kiddos had to wait a week to use theirs and they worked perfectly!

After the class, it was pretty apparent whether it was one of the boys or the girls who made a certain color...the boys mostly mixed varying shades of greens and blues, or vomit green as they called it, while the girlies had a broader color spectrum and a lot more reds and purples. Some kiddos stayed in a certain color range so I made some extra primary colors the day before the class to complete the color wheel! I'll share some more photos from the class as it progresses (and hopefully photos not taken on my phone during the frenzy of color mixing).

summer bookmaking workshop

Last week was an absolute blur. Between filing paperwork then running from the pool to the school, if you had asked me what day of the week it was I would probably have responded with "accordion book day." During summer workshops, my days of the week are distinguished by what the project is for the day. Our week's schedule was:

• Monday: mini paper bag books & baby oil and oil pastel on paper bags for our altered book covers
• Tuesday: Mini accordion watercolor books & start the altered book project
• Wednesday: Coptic binding basics
• Thursday: Black/white nature print book with rubber band/paper clip binding
• Friday: finished altered books

Every day we worked on their altered books a little more too. This group was really great and super eager to learn new things! What really surprised me was how much they enjoyed the altered book project. In some other classes that I introduced this project, it was like pulling teeth to get them to even write their name in the book. With this group, everyday they couldn't wait to break out their books, even going so far as printing out photos and bringing in their own supplies to add to their books. It was so much fun to walk around and see them playing and experimenting with their books!

I did a lot of these projects for last year's workshop, and others are from classes I taught during the school year. I didn't really get a chance to take any photos during the actual process of making them. I might do some in-depth posts about how to make some of the new projects but here are some photos from my week of bookmaking! Psst...this week is printmaking!!!

Monday: mixing baby oil and oil pastels on paper bag panels

Monday: mini paper bag notebooks

Tuesday: mini accordion watercolor books

Wednesday: Coptic binding basics

Thursday: nature printing and rubber band/paper clip binding

This day was the most messy!

Friday: altered books! This girl's altered book was really fun! She had pages of paper cut out scenes

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?

adventures in hand-printing...

I love this little mandala!

I've mentioned it before so pardon me if it's a little repetitive but I really can't say it enough...I love printmaking. It was a daily routine in college, with 4 hour studios 4 days a week with additional hours after school and on weekends. It feels so good to be printing again! Albeit it is on a much smaller scale this time in comparison to the stuff I was printing at school but it is still so much fun. 

There has been a lot of experimenting and trying new ways of printing in a tiny space but so far it is all going really well. I feel like I have a MacGyver printing studio now between all the jerry-rigged materials and methods of printing. 

Since I don't have any inking slabs, I have been using my tin-foil ink slab method I found last summer while teaching my printmaking workshop. It's the best! One piece of tin foil taped down keeps all the mess contained to one spot and makes clean up so quick. Perfect for a tiny art bubble! 

Hand-printing with linoleum is also another new challenge. Before I had only used it for embossing so learning how to print with it is a completely new adventure. What I have found works best with my little tiny carvings is to essentially turn them into stamps! I've been dismantling old stamps I have and up-cycling some little plastic boxes and gluing my little leaves, arrows and feathers to them to make stamps. Much better than blindly aiming with the paper and hoping it lands in the center...

An old stamp base and the lid to a box of sewing pins! My favorite stamps...plus the clear plastic lid helps me aim!

I have also noticed I am not the best at making identical prints without the aid of centering marks that you have in Lithography. My aim is usually just a little off so I was having difficulties making multiples of the same card, which is a problem when I'm trying to make every card/envelope/sheet of paper count. The simple solution to that has been printing on butcher paper. I've been printing multiples of the same design on butcher paper then cutting the designs out and attaching them to the cards when they're dry! They add another layer of color but also guarantee I have a centered design and nearly identical products. YES! And it combines some of my favorite color schemes...

The printing on butcher paper has also turned into it's own project...I printed a TON of leaves the other day and covered some pages in their loveliness... these will become book covers for some mini blank books! 

Most of these new designs, books and cards I'm going to save for the Art Market in Santa Barbara next month but there are still plenty of others in my Etsy shop. I may also keep a couple for the sweet ladies that are participating in my Craft it Forward adventure (there's still one more comment spot left if you'd like to participate!) 

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! 

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! 

V-Day: Heart Watercolor Cut-Out Card & Heart Strand

There are so many hearts floating around my art bubble right now! V-Day has never been my favorite holiday but I had to bring out my inner heart lover in order to figure out some projects for my kiddos this week! I'm actually surprised how easily they came out...really surprised...and I enjoyed making them...*gasp*

Either way, I'm doing my best to procrastinate less on my lessons (one of the reasons why I don't have a Friday Feature today...) I actually got these planned/made far enough in advance to take some photos while I was making them.  

I made 2.5 projects for my kiddos and these are the first 1.5. The first is a Watercolor/Cutout Heart Card for my 3rd graders, the remnants of that which actually led into another mini project too. The name is a little funky since I'm not really sure what to call it...there are a bunch of assorted steps involved and Snowflake Heart Card doesn't seem right....but I digress...

So, a Heart Watercolor Cut-Out card! 

First, you need a piece of watercolor paper and a piece of brown paper (paper bags would work too!) that are the same size. Ours were 7.5" x 15" so our final card was 7.5" x 7.5". Use a white crayon to draw out A LOT of mini hearts (no bigger than quarters) all over the watercolor paper. When that's done, use light washes of red and yellow watercolors and go over the entire paper until all the hearts are revealed. 

While that's drying, use scissors to cut hearts out of the brown paper that are significantly larger than the crayon hearts. The kids and I folded the paper randomly on the piece and cut out half a heart, so when it was unfolded you had a whole cut out heart. The kids and I actually called them heart snowflakes. Try to fit as many big hearts all over the brown paper that you can. 

 When you've cut out as many hearts as you can, glue the brown paper on top of the dried watercolor page, fold it in half and you have a card! 

On to the next project, a quick Strand of Hearts! This mini project was a result of all the cute brown paper hearts left over from making the card. All I did was poke holes through the round parts of each heart and thread some string through them. And you have a quick strand of hearts! Two projects in one! I'm going to post the last project over the weekend so stay tuned.