Art Projects

We have not been idle here at the Bonny Blue House, although we have been quiet.  January and February always seem to be a good time to hunker down and create here. 

First, before I share some of our projects may I ask a prayer for Dave. Poor man had emergency spinal surgery last Thursday. He had a badly herniated disk pressing on nerves in his spinal column which resulted in the loss of the use of his left leg.  Having a great need for his left leg we opted for the surgery. He is recovering but it is a painful process. 

Thank you.

Now for some art..

Our first project of the year was a penguin print project that I found on That Artist Woman, and what a treasure that site is! The instructions were very clear but it needed a bit of prep on my part, cutting up potatoes and sponges. 

First I taped some heavy weight paper down and let the kids mix some blues and white together to come up with a sky. We used a big foam brush for this (Dollar Tree sells them by the package) and we let that dry (ten minutes maybe). Then I gave them cut up kitchen sponges (6 for a dollar ) and they stamped snow. As That Artis Woman said, "give the penguins a place to stand".  

Then using the directions I cut a flat place on a largish potato which they used to stamp a black spot, then a smaller potato stamped a white spot on top.  Sorry, I neglected picture taking at this point in order to help. Once the penguin bodies were dry they added an orange nose and feet using triangle shaped sponge cut outs and eyes using a round foam stamp brush.  When the whole thing dried I carefully peeled off the tape revealing a white boarder and I glued the paintings to large black paper to "frame them" I find that this makes the children's work a little more "important" looking,

The snowflakes were made on copy paper with a puncher. We just glue sticked them on.

 

Another project we worked on was a small brush stroke Monet type painting which I found in the book Playful Learning by Mariah Bruehl. 

While I read to them from the book What Makes a Monet a Monet? they set to work.

This also required some prep work for me, the night before.  I selected a landscape photo from a previous vacation in Maine. This one…

In retrospect I would have chosen a photo with more variation in color but this worked out ok.  After everone went to bed I took the photos, which I just printed on regular paper, and I mod podged it to large watercolor paper. It dried overnight.

When it came time to work, as I read about Monet's style of using very small brush strokes, often just dots, the children mixed paints and using tiny strokes painted over the picture recreating it in paint. 

It took a bit of time but they were pleased with the results, as was I.

This was one of those projects that seems easier in the book than it turns out to be, still very worthwhile. I was glad I waited until the little people were out of the house before we tried it though.

Lastly, I'll leave this monster post with a quick little Saint Agnes craft I did with the littles (and some big ones).  It's pretty self explanatory.

I bought those little snowflake frames in Michaels after Christmas. I think they were thirty cents each or something.  All I did was print off a picture of Saint Agnes and cut it to fit in the frame. Then I let them loose with white paint and some silvery blue glitter. I kept the red ribbon to symbolize the martydom of Saint Agnes. Again, while they worked I read the story of Saint Agnes to them (does anyone have a nice picture book about her?) and we discussed purity, and the various symbols of the saint.

This is a hardly a new craft but having kinderpeople makes old things new again. I am enjoying doing the crafty thing with little people again. I am also a lot more relaxe about glitter. I don't think Ryan, Katie and Erin even knew it existed until they were well into double digits :).