Sadly Neglected!

Wow - four months since a posting! I need to get back into the habit of posting my art work. I have slowed down a lot in regards to swaps and my art has taken a back seat to color guard competitions, baseball, teaching, new business, housework and my newest adventure with my hubby - soap making. We will have different hand made, cold pressed soaps for sale soon (they take weeks to cure). If you are interested in natural soap, contact me to see what is available.

Here are two photos. The button fairies were for a swap I hosted on my Yahoo art group. They have hand painted faces and wings and are strung on wire with buttons. I think they are so happy and colorful! The tea pot was my contribution to a tea pot fat book recipe swap. It has a collage background with layers of paint and a hand painted mug. The recipe is on the back for my very yummy chocolate chip muffins - a favorite around here.

Our family continues to "green up" and eat better (mostly without knowing). We joined a new CSA (community supported agriculture) farm so we are looking forward to fresh veggies all summer. I'm running a craft table for the kids during the open house this weekend, at the farm, and will be teaching a journal making class next month to the member's kids. We are also hosting an art night for our small group, so I'm looking forward to see how creative they are! So even if I can't get some personal art done, I get to share what I love with others! Look for some more frequent posts!

One Small Change Challenge

I have two new favorite sites, SouleMama and Hip Mountain Mama. Hip Mtn Mama has issued a challenge to make one small change each month to help the environment. Here it is:

"Our vision with Hip Mountain Mama is much larger than selling environmentally friendly products. We are passionate about educating others about sustainability and passsionate about building community. Our desire to create a community of individuals who want to make a possitive change has led to the creation of our One Small Change project.

We want to challenge each of you to make 1 change each month leading up to Earth Day (April 22, 2010). It can be small or it can be huge, but all we ask is that you decide on something you will do to make a positive green impact and follow through with it. If everyone makes 4 changes between January and April, this can have a huge effect. If you want to be a part of this amazing and life changing challenge, please see below for details.

How does it work? On January first (or soon after) you will decide on what change you want to make for that month and blog about it. For the entire month you will be conscious of this decision and follow through with what you decided on. Then on Feb. 1 you will write another blog post explaining how the month went with your new green change and also write about what you will change for that month. You will do the same on March 1st and April 1st, then will have one final post on April 22nd listing all the changes you made and the differences it made in your life."

I have several ideas in mind. One for this month, I use recycled bags at the grocery store, but nowhere else. I feel guilty bringing home all that plastic from Target or WalMart. I pulled out some pretty fabric yesterday and am going to sew up some bags to take to non-grocery stores. My sister gave me a book for Christmas from Soulemama on recycled sewing projects, including shopping bags. She knows how I comb the thrift stores looking for things to repurpose. If I didn't have such a large fabric stash from when a fabric shop went out of business, I would be buying old curtains or sheets for this project. I'll post some photos when they are made

http://hipmountainmamablog.com/one-small-change/

Affirmation Cards

These five cards are for my Affirmation Card Swap. The idea was to create five different affirmations. They get sent to the hostess and I get, in return, four more sets of five cards. If you want me to do the math, I'll finish with 25 inspirational cards. This was difficult for me because I am an act of service person, not words of affirmation, but once I got going, I found I am looking forward to receiving the returns. I was so inspired that I am making my mom-in-law a set of affirmation cards for Christmas with Bible verses. I played around with art paste and oil pastels for those - photos in the near future.

The cards were all done in craft acrylics. I added some gel medium to help the paint spread better. My copy of "Grateful" pictured here ran a bit when I applied the gel medium to seal it. The scan didn't turn out well - two of the girls have pink hair.
I purposely kept them simple and bold because I thought it created an uplifting, happy look.

ATC Swaps

Here are a few ATCs for upcoming swaps. I have two goldfish for a partner swap. One done in fluid acrylics on an oil pastel background, the other in watercolor on paper background. The blowing wind is for "Up in the Air" done in fluids and the door is for "Doors and Windows". Colored pencil on paper. The door does open to reveal a fairy.

Greetings from Florida!

Thought I would post something quick from Florida. I know I need some new stuff on this blog. I have been bogged down with teaching, home schooling, my newest cause, fostering dogs, and now I'm in Florida, so my art has slowed down. I have a bunch of swaps coming due, so I hope to post some of my current work when I get back home. Check back over the next few weeks.

TAB Choice

When I took over as art teacher last year at my son's school, I changed the entire curriculum for seven classes. I wanted the projects to be fresh and to be ones that I tested. I got a lot of compliments on the work that was produced and the kids enjoyed the projects. The only problem was, it was cookie cutter art. Most looked like my examples. A teacher that I met through one of my art groups (our schools swapped ATCs) told me about TAB - teaching for artistic behavior. I started researching it over the summer, joined another Yahoo group dedicated to it, got a book on it and was convinced it was the way to go. Fortunately my principal is very cool and open to new ideas and gave me the go ahead.

So what is TAB you ask? It is a choice based art room filled with art centers where the students move from station to station creating their own art work. Studies and experience from other teachers show that the kids are more invested in their work because it is their work. The art may not be as pretty, but it is real and creative. Centers include; drawing, painting, fiber arts, collage, print making and short term stations like paper mache, book making, puppet making. It puts less pressure on me to create new lessons and gives the art back to the kids and gets them thinking like artists. Mistakes are a good thing as kids learn what works and what doesn't. I give a short demo each class on a technique and then step back and offer individual instructions or help when needed.

I didn't want to go right into this, so we started the year creating murals. I gave each grade a theme and let them work together to plan and create the murals. It went over very well and we had some great art work on the wall for open house. I followed this with the drawing and collage centers. The younger grades embraced this new system and really wowed me with their work. Kindergarten produced some books, first and second grade some very cool paper sculptures. My ADHD student was so engaged, he had no trouble focusing and produced some cool art. This past week I had a set lessons and second grade was dissappointed that the centers were not open. The upper grades were the ones that were lost. They have spent years being told what to draw/make, that they were unsure with this new freedom. I think they will need baby steps!

I hope to be fully switched over to a choice based room by December. Kindergarten will continue to alter between choice and lessons. I want to make sure they have help with basis skills such as tracing, scissor work, painting and drawing. I have a few kids that can't cut - they keep saying the scissors do not work. I am looking forward to this year and seeing what great art work the kids come up with.

Let it Go

My blog has been ignored for over a month! I have been crazy busy and blogging, Facebook and Yahoo have taken a back seat. I decided to add a piece that I did in August. It is a mixed media done on a recycled hard back book. The background is covered with assorted scrapbook papers, gesso, paint, stamping and images. The girl is done in fluid acrylics. I have done about five paintings with different sayings, but this is my favorite! I think we all have something in our lives to let go.

Art Journal

Here are a few pages from my newest journal. All are heavily layered pieces; papers, tissue paper, gesso, fluid acrylics, images, stamping. The two girls are aged versions of my daughters.

Trying to Fix my Blog

After visiting many blogs and admiring the layouts, I decided to fancy up mine. I found a site that had free templates, picked out one, followed the directions and then it got messed up. I lost my "layout" button and my blog layout changed to something I didn't set up. I spent some time before vacation trying to figure it out, but got frustrated (which doesn't take much) and just left it how it was.

Yesterday I went searching on Blogger and found a place to post questions to problems. By yesterday afternoon a very nice man e-mailed me with possible solutions. I just read thru what he sent me and found out my blog reverted back to a classic template. I clicked a few things and got my old layout back! It is still not completely fixed because the background I tried to import is now there as well as the free background button. Next step is to try and figure out how to delete this new background. I think I have to go into the html program - better leave that one for hubby!







I am breaking my altered art protocol and have added some photos from our wonderful vacation to the Shenandoah Valley in VA. The beautiful sunset is what we watched from our deck each evening. The landscape is also the view from the deck of the front lawn and pasture. You can see part of the 1/4 mile drive at the bottom of the photo. See why I am ready to pick-up and move! We visited Luray Caverns. The photos can not capture the vastness and majesty of the caves. A beautiful Monarch along Skyline Drive. The view from Stony Man at 4010 feet (2nd highest in Shenandoah Nat. Forest). We hiked to the top of the mountain and were perched on the rocky ledge (scary, scary). The cool part is we hiked part of the Appalachian Trail to get there. I am in love with the area and miss it!

I hope to post some new projects soon. I am in between swaps at the moment, but have been working on my personal art journal and some paintings. I'll scan some of the journal pages and upload them. I am very pleased with the two paintings I just finished. They are very layered with collage materials. The old hard back book cover turned out to be a wonderful canvas. I am toying with the idea of selling them. My problem is I get attached to my art and don't want to part with it.

Have a great creative week!

More Charms

I was in another charm swap on one of my Yahoo groups. The round and square charms are a heavy cardboard base. They both have paper added. The Asian one has a charm and some cording. The square has a hand painted flower. The puzzle piece is just that - a puzzle piece painted, wrapped in wire and beads. I need to come up with an idea to display all the charms I have gotten in swaps. After this one, I think I will have about 15 very unique pieces of art.

As summer is winding down, I have been painting in overdrive. I think my free time will be greatly diminished when the school year starts. I will have to go back to "Sunday is my day of art" - don't bother me. I finished up the art journal for the round robin while on vacation. Unfortunately I don't have another one because we had problems with one of the participants and she has two of the member's journals and won't return them. Luckily mine is not one of them! I began my second personal art journal. So far in this one I have been concentrating on painting my big eyed girls on various collaged backgrounds. I am also playing around with larger versions on canvas and old books. I actually started journaling in the first journal I made - wrote about our trip to the Shenandoah Valley. I love making the art, but forget to write which is strange because I love to write. I'm just not a diary person.

Well enough computer time - I'm off to paint (and make dinner).