Nature Lover Day Two

One day down two to go. Today we worked with the children on blending with colored pencils and practiced on flowers. We went over primary and secondary colors, and how they can achieve those colors with blending colored pencils. Some of the drawings turned out quite amazing. It is interesting to see how children can be drawn to different mediums. Colored pencils are certainly more controlled and exacting. Last week with watercolors those children who like controlled mediums had to let go a bit. I think it is good to let them try all different kids of mediums because it challenges them to think differently about how to achieve what they want to produce. Below are some photos from our session.

Tweet, tweet, or these days I guess I should say chirp, chirp so web savvy people don't get too confused. Birds are all around and certainly in the east bay. We get so many birds that come into our backyard. Some even get brave enough to come into my kitchen. They quickly realize they are in the wrong place when our small dog Bento goes chasing after them. While researching projects for the summer we came across so many birdfeeders, and we really liked the idea, but we wanted to do something that didn't use plastic bottles. My partner in crime remembered doing them as a young girl with lemon rinds and nailing them to a tree. We really liked this idea, and since I have two orange trees we thought it was a perfect match and compostable. So we sliced the oranges in half, and had the kids scoop out all of the meat of the orange leaving the rind. All of the students then got to fill their "birdfeeder" with birdseed and peanut butter. Then we spot glued some string to hang the birder with. They turned out cute, and they attracted some other living friends as well, particularly a bug that looked like a ladybug but was green and black.

Our last project for the day was our posable frogs. This is one of those projects I was really looking forward to because I wanted to have them around the house. We gathered some really great fabrics for them to, and being a fabric fiend it was fun going through all of our fabric and creating groupings that would work really well together for the kids. The kids picked out two fabrics that they liked best, and traced to pattern piece onto the fabric. Promptly then utting out the pieces, and then we assisted the kids in sewing the two pieces together and helped them turn the frog inside out. We used buckwheat hulls to fill up these frogs. They picked out pony beads for the eyes and we sewed them on for them. Some of the children wanted to help sew them on which was a great help. I just love how they turned out.

Nature Lover Week Day One

Last week of Craft Kitchen, and I'm getting a bit teary eyed. Nature Lover week is on. This is the week we are focusing on colored pencils, and having a hand at botanical drawings. The kids seem to be doing well even on the first day. We started out with working on some of the techniques with colored pencils. Techniques such as light and dark lines, thin and thick lines, cross hatching, stippling, and smooth. I was amazed at how well the children were seeing what they were drawing. It seemed as though most of them were pleased with what they had done. I always tell them that if they are happy with their work/art then that is all anyone can ask. Typically we are all our own worst critique. Below I am sharing some of the artists that we get to work with this week.

Once we finished with our botanical drawings we moved on to our sun print totes. We pre-made the totes using ribbon for the handle and samples of pants/jeans that we just sewed closed at the bottom. They worked well for this project, and we always love being able to use interesting items that we can customize some how. So the kids first painted the tote with a foam brush and water. This just gets the fabric wet and allows the paint/dye to bleed and cover easily. After they "soaked" the fabric they picked out the leaves they wanted to use, and made sure they all fit onto their bag. Then they picked out which color they wanted to use between a turquoise and magenta color. After we mixed some paint up for them they then coated their tote with the paint, and then arranged the leaves onto their bags. Using some small rocks since it was a bit breezy we were able to hold down the leaves on their bags so they would leave an imprint. The bag stayed in the sun for about 30 minutes before we unveiled them. The children then took all of their leaves and rocks off to see how what sort of imprint was left from the sun. These particular paints are sun paints/dyes by Setacolor. There are a variety of colors that you can get them in, and I bought ours from Dharma Trading Co. located in San Rafael, CA. The totes turned out cute. They each have a pocket on the other side just like jeans would.

While the sun print totes dried we moved on to our leaf jar lanterns. We used tissue paper, leaves, foam brushes, and matte medium. The kids cut up some tissue paper, picked out leaves, and went to it. They first painted some matte medium on the jar, and then stuck the leaf to the painted area and then placed one piece of tissue paper on top of the leaf. Carefully they pressed down to get the paper to stick a little, and then painted more matter medium on to the tissue paper from the center of the piece out to one side then the other. They repeated that all the way around their lantern jars. When lit they look really nice, and have so many possibilities.

Last project for the day we made nature prints. It was a chance for the kids to do some pounding. We picked petals out of flowers that we had. I have some bougainvillea growing into our yard so we picked some of that to print with. The bougainvillea actually works extremely well because it is really thin and delicate yet not to juicy. They children arranged their petals and leaves on the paper, and then sandwiched them with another piece on top. We didn't have enough hammers for each child so they had to take turns using them. They did a great job sharing and using the hammers. The petals and leaves get pulverized, but leave behind the color from within, and can create some really interesting patterns, and beautiful color too. I think the kids liked pounding those hammers, if only I were to judge by how loud it got. Fun stuff.