How to make a Snowman Banner

This is a cute project I'm doing with Kindergarten right now.

Snowman Banners.

Here in Calgary we just received a good dump of snow and now it's warming up (above 0 degrees celsius).....perfect snowman weather!

We wanted a cute and easy project that incorporated textiles.





















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- fabric or burlap 
- sewing machine or glue gun (adult use only)
- white felt/material
- masking tape
- sponges or foam
- white acrylic paint
- wax paper
- tacky glue
- black felt
- red felt or fleece
- 2 black buttons
- 3 assorted buttons
- small scrap of orange material
- black dimensional fabric paint
- brown yarn
- fabric snowflakes
- dowel, stick, bamboo garden stake
- yarn


PROCEDURE:

Take an art board or piece of cardboard and tape on some wax paper.

The paint will seep thru the fabric.

Take the fabric or burlap and cut a rectangle.  Sew a channel at the top.  If you don't sew you can use a glue gun.


Tape the banner to the wax paper.  This will stop it from moving around.

Take the white fabric or felt and cut some snow for the bottom.

With Kindergarten I had this pre-cut for them.

Glue on to the bottom of the banner with the tacky glue.

Take your sponges or foam and cut a large circle, a medium circle, and a small circle.

Put some white acrylic paint on a plate.  Place the large sponge into the paint, swirl it a bit getting it loaded with enough paint.

Place in the centre of the banner touching the white fabric at the bottom.  Press down.  Continue with the medium sponge and the finish with the small one.

Cut a hat out of the black felt.  You could also make a toque with some brightly coloured felt or fleece and add a pom pom.

Glue into place.

Add a scarf out of felt or fabric.  2 black button eyes and 3 assorted buttons.

With some dimensional fabric paint add a smile.

Cut a little triangle out of orange fabric or felt and glue into place.

Cut some lengths of brown yarn and glue on for arms.

I found some nice fabric snowflakes at the dollar store so we added them to our background.

Add a dowel, I use natural bamboo stakes from the garden centre, trimmed down to size.

Add some yarn and your banner is ready to hang.

The grade 1 just finished this paper snowman so I thought I would show you.


Very easy to do if you are looking for a quick snowman project.

So if you are knee deep in snow like we are why not give these projects a try.


See you soon.

How to make an Art Calendar

I have lots of art calendars.  I get one every year to keep the inspiration going.  (This year it's the Metropolitan)

It occurred to me that it would be great to make your own so I created one that showcases some of my favourite projects.

It's a desktop one that stands up on it's own and once you know how to make one you can easily adapt this project for a keepsake book or journal (i.e Mother's  Day).

I added a small calendar to each page for this year.

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- 2 pieces of corrugated cardboard, the size you want for the calendar
- paint 
- coloured cardstock
- binder rings, chain, wire, or even ribbon/string
- artwork for the different months, same size as the cardboard
- glue
- hole punch
- piece of wide ribbon
- printable calendar

PROCEDURE:

I'm going to walk you thru how to make the covers and how to get it to stand up first.   You then can add the pages/months.
Cut 2 pieces of corrugated cardboard the size you want for your calendar or book.  These will be the front and back cover of your calendar.

I like to prime them with white paint or gesso.





Prime both sides. Set aside to dry.

Now you have different options for binding your calendar.

Binder rings are nice but can be a bit pricey especially if you are doing a whole class.  Another great option are shower curtain rings.  I can get a set of 12 for $1.00 at the Dollar Store.

You can also just use wire, ribbon or string.

I'm going to use binder rings for this calendar.

I mark with a pencil where I want the holes to go on one of the primed pieces of cardboard.

Punch with a single hole puncher.

Place this piece of cardboard on top of the second piece and mark with pencil where the holes are.  Punch them on the second piece.

You can now attach the rings.

To make the stand I cut a piece of wide ribbon slightly longer than the width of the calendar when it is standing.

On the back of the front cover glue the end of the ribbon to the middle of the bottom.



You can use tacky glue or hot glue.

Glue the other end to the bottom of the other piece of cardboard.

 Now have a calendar/book that will stand up.


If you want you can get fancy and do 2 pieces of ribbon on either end as an alternate way.


You can now add your pages as well as artwork for the front and back cover.  Punch holes in each new page.

Each piece of artwork is mounted on a piece of coloured card stock that is the same size as my cardboard covers.

You can add the names of the months with stamps, hand lettered, stencilled, or using computer text.  I used my cricut.

I found a printable calendar online.  I cut each month out and added them to my artwork pages.




That's it.

I hope everyone had a great holiday break.  I know I did.  I start a new residency today and I'm looking forward to working with my new crop of students!



It's going to be a week of clay projects, some old , some new.  You'll get to see the finished results in a few weeks.

Christmas Projects

Well tomorrow is the last day of school and as of yesterday we had all the Christmas Projects completed.  Yeah!!!

A big thanks to my helpers, Ana, Colette, and Lori !


Here are some of the Angel plates Grade 1 completed. 

I did not get a chance to snag a photo of Kindergarten's Nativity plates but here is the original post.

Here are Grade 6's Poinsettias.  We have changed the design from my original post.  We use a chinet bowl as a base to hold the clay into position while drying. 

Grade 4 made these adorable wood Snowmen.

Grade 2 did the Snowman Family Portraits on canvas but I can't show you them because of all the last names. They were terrific though.

Grade 3 made the Christmas Houses. Here are a few I managed to photograph.

Grade 5 did the "We Three Kings" banners.

Great job everyone.


I still planning to post more last minute crafts if I get all my wrapping done.
See you soon.

Felt Joy Banner

We had our 6th annual Christmas Craft Day at school on Friday,  150 kids, 12 crafts, one morning!  A big thanks to all the volunteers who helped with prep and running the craft stations on the day.

That was why the blog was quiet last week.  I was knee deep in all the preparations!

I have had a few inquiries as to how this all comes about.  Basically Grade 1,2 and 3 rotate thru 12 craft stations in one morning. They can make all 12 or spend more time perfecting only a few.


Now that it is over I thought I would show you all the crafts from this year over the next few days.  First up is the Felt Joy Banner. 

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- red, green , and white felt

- tacky glue

- glue gun or sewing machine

- scissors

- embellishments

- small bell

- dowel

- pruning shears

- craft wire

PROCEDURE:

Cut a rectangle of felt in either red or green.  The dimensions we used was 10" x 5".

You need to make a pocket to hold the dowel.  Now you can sew it or glue it.  With 150 of these to be prepped we hot glued them all.

Fold over an inch and secure in place.

Now I have the pocket for my dowel.  I used natural bamboo garden stakes that were cut into 6 inch long lengths.  Cut with pruning shears.

Out of white felt cut a letter "J" and a "Y".  Make an "O" out of red or green.  I used a letter stencil to make a template or pattern.  I cut the template out of recycled cardboard (a cereal box).

Lay your template backwards on your felt and trace around with a fine black sharpie.  Cut with small sharp scissors.  Ones with a pointy tip work the best.  When clipping out the letter try to clip away the sharpie line.  Because we traced it backwards any remaining sharpie will be on the
back side.  Use tacky glue and glue into place on your banner.

Add some embellishments.  I scouted thru the Dollar store and found these shiny fabric Holly leaves.

We clipped them apart and added them to our "O".

I also found these glitter balls which worked great as Holly berries.  You could also cut the leaves out of felt and use red buttons for the berries.

I bought bells at the Dollar store as well.  Make a little hole in the felt at the bottom of your banner.

Push the loop of the string thru the hole, pass the bell thru the loop and your bell is now securely fastened.

Take a 12 inch piece of craft wire.  Twist onto one end of the dowel and then on the other.  This is the hanger.

That's it.



3 years ago we made this JOY sign but I didn't have enough cardboard this year for 150 signs so we went with felt instead.

You can find the tutorial for this sign HERE.  I tend to only repeat crafts every 3 years so the individual student doesn't get any repeats during their 3 years participating.

 Some other crafts we revisited this year was the Little Snowman.

We also did these paper trees.














I'll be back next time with more Christmas Craft Day activities.