Book Reviews and Giveaway

My 2 friends and I would like to introduce you to 2 new titles from Laurence King Publishing, graciously provided by my friends at Raincoast books.

"My Even More Wonderful World of Fashion" by Nina Chakrabarti,  is great for all those future Project Runway candidates.

Soft cover and over 200 pages of prompts to get you drawing and designing your next "fashionista" collection.

"Let's Make Some Great Art" by Marion Deuchars is also soft cover and full of prompts, techniques and art history.  Lots of art projects in the making here.

I really enjoyed the artist profiles and accompanying projects.

So if you are interested in winning both of these books please leave me a comment on this post, an email  (thatartistwoman@shaw.ca ), or a like/comment on Facebook.

You have until Wednesday 11:59pm and the results will be posted Thursday.  U.S. and Canadian residents only.  Good Luck everyone!



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Halloween Jumping Jacks

I've been meaning to post another "jumping jack" project for some time.  It seems to fit the Halloween theme so here we go.

 I made up 2 versions for you.

Nothing like an art project you can create and then play with.














MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- templates, PUMPKIN, FRANKENSTEIN
- this cardboard, like a cereal box
- scissors, pencil
- gesso
- paint/paintbrush or pencil crayons, felts, crayons, any medium to add color
- paper fasteners
- string
- bead for the pull
- hole punch
- embroidery or crochet weight thread and needle
- ribbon for hanger
- Mod podge, optional

PROCEDURE:

Using templates trace out pieces onto your cardboard and cut out.

With really young kids, (Kinders), I have taken the template and just glued it onto the cardboard.

If you want you can give your pieces a coat of primer or gesso.

When the gesso has dried add color to your "jack".  Decorate with any medium you want, you can add embellishments like googly eyes.

Now you are ready to string your "jack".  It looks more complicated than it is and once you've strung one you can do it in minutes.

The holes on the template are just guidelines.  Put the upper arm into place behind the body piece. Have it sticking straight out and using the hole punch, punch holes thru both pieces.

Now if you want a nice strong puppet you can give all the pieces a coat of Mod podge after you have punched the holes, wait until dry and then assemble.

Slip in a paper fastener.  I'm using the large ones like we have at school but you can get a whole range of sizes and colors now at the craft store.

Bend down your ends, keep it pretty loose.  Sometimes I cut the ends down with the nippers if they stick out too much.

Do all the joints in the same fashion.

Take your crochet or embroidery thread and thread your needle. Make sure the puppet is is a relaxed position, arms and legs down. Now starting with the upper arms push the needle thru the cardboard, placement is important here, it's the little circle marked on the templates.

Tie the string off and then thread to the other arm.  You don't have to make it super tight but there shouldn't be slack in the line connecting the arms.


Do the same with the legs.

Take your string and tie a knot in the middle of the thread joining the arms.

Pass the string down and under the thread joining the legs.

Holding the string down loop it around and tie a knot in the middle of the thread joining the legs.  You need to make sure there is no slack between in the string between the arms and the legs.

Test the mechanism, if it's not working unknot your string and try again!

Tie on a bead for the pull at the end of the string.

Tie a loop in a piece of ribbon and stick to the back of the head of your puppet.

Hang them up or just hold them and you're ready to make them dance.

See you soon for another great giveaway next time.

Halloween Cat Art Project

Here is another Halloween art project.   It's 3D with the cat sitting out from the pumpkin background.

Very easy to make and makes a nice display for those Halloween themed bulletin boards or at home.  Make a small one with the ground equal in size to the pumpkin and you have a pop up card.










MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- black cardstock
- wc paper (14x12 or so)
- pencil
- tempera disk paints
- glue
- scissors
- white pencil crayon
- templates, Cat BODY and Cat HEAD
- colored paper (optional)



PROCEDURE:

On your wc paper or heavy sketch paper fold up the bottom 2 inches.

Flatten out again and sketch out a pumpkin shape using the fold line as the bottom of the pumpkin.  You want the pumpkin to be as big as you can make it on that paper.

In the bottom 2 inches draw a few leaves keeping most of the bottom paper.

Using your tempera disk paint, liquid tempera or wc paint add color to your sketch.

Using the templates trace out the cat body and head onto black paper.  Use a white pencil crayon so you can see it.

Cut out.

Now you could use colored paper to make your eyes, nose, and inner ears or you can paint them on scrap wc paper.

Cut out and glue into place on your cat head.  Using that white pencil crayon again draw in the whiskers and mouth.

Following guidelines on the template fold body and head.

Turn cat head to the back and apply some glue on the lower part of the tab after the last fold line.

Stick it onto the back of your cat body so that the fold lines match up.

When your pumpkin background is dry cut it out.


Fold up that bottom 2 inches on the fold line you've already made.

Apply glue to the back of the cat and the bottom inch that is folded up.

Do not put any glue on the tail above the fold line or on the head.

Stick onto background matching the fold lines of the bottom 2 inches of the background and the bottom of the cat.

That's it!

Now that wasn't so hard was it.  If you find your cat sagging a bit from the background you can add an extra strip of posterboard along the bottom fold line in the back for extra support.











See you soon,

Halloween Inchies Part 2 and Giveaway Results

So this is part 2 of the "inchie" post and at the end I'll reveal the winner of the "How To Be The Best BubbleWriter In The World Ever" giveaway.

For the Spiderweb square I used a twistable white crayon as a resist. You can also use oil pastel. You draw in your spiderweb design on the white square (I know, I know, white on white is hard to see but if you angle it in the light you can see the sheen of the crayon).

Paint it with purple tempera and your spiderweb will instantly appear.

Draw in some spider legs with a sharpie and then add a blob of black paint for the spider.  With the kids I think I'll use a Q-tip to make the spider.

For the cat square I cut out a rounded triangle out of black paper and glued it on, used a sharpie to make the ears, cut out eyes from yellow paper and used the sharpie again to mark in the pupils.  Glue eyes on.  I used a white gel marker to make whiskers and then glued in a small yellow triangle.  For really young kids you could base it on basic shapes and have them pre cut.

For the group of ghosts square I painted the background purple.  I used some white labels and cut out some ghost shapes.  Stick onto your square and then draw in the eyes and mouths.

For the beetle, (Beetlejuice) square paint a oval and let dry.  Taking chalk or pastel, color around oval and smear.

Add some details with (you guessed it) a sharpie......man I should have bought stock in that company ...mod podge too!

For Frank I painted a square purple, let dry and then cut out a pocket shape from old green painted paper (it pays to have that painted paper stash!) .  Glue onto square.

Then I cut out a rectangle from black paper and cut a spiky hairline (with young kids those decorative scissors work great for this), glue on to googly eyes.  I also cut 2 little squares from my metal tape, you could use sequins or stickers.  Add a mouth and that one is done.

For the owl square I painted it orange and let dry.  Using my stamp pad I stamped a thumbprint.

Punched 2 eyes from white paper and glued those on.  Color in pupils with you know who (Mr. Sharpie)!

Add a few details (feet, wings, tuffs) and glue on a yellow beak.  I should of done 2 as there was room. 

  There you have it all 12 squares.  Inchie Twinchie mania is taking over the school.  If you set this up as a center in a corner of your room you will always have a free time activity ready to go.  I am cutting inchies by the hundreds for all the teachers.  Give each child a ziploc to store them as you go and in no time you'll have collections to put on display!

On to the giveaway......I had to do this draw the old fashioned way as I discovered I couldn't rely on Facebook to give me a timestamp for each entry over there, go figure.  So out of 108 total entries (comments, emails, likes) the winner is

Jane from Out of the Crayon Box who was the 15th comment on the blog and said:  

Awesome! Teaching an early appreciation of fonts! I am sure my 4th graders would be very motivated by this one. Count me in.

October 11, 2011 8:29 PM 

Congrats Jane! it is an awesome book and I know your students are going to love it.    Thanks everyone for entering and there are more book giveaways coming so please enter again.      That's it from me now, must return to school so grade 3 can finish painting those Batiks.  See you next week.