Mini Gardens with Students

As promised here are a few tips on how I create my fairy or mini  gardens both at home and at school.



Here is latest mini garden I created with my son for a teacher gift in June.

Here are some mini gardens I did with Grade 4 in May.

There are a few differences mostly due to the cost of supplies.

The nice thing about these gardens are you can replant them.  So students can relocate them to a larger area when they take them home.  The houses are also reusable so you can make a new mini garden every year.  That's what we do at our house.




MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- pot of some sort, at school we used 12" plastic pots (around $1.00 a piece).  For gifts or for your own use you can purchase a larger one.  I like to use a ceramic pot that is shallow with room for the garden to grow.
- soil
- rocks, and or gravel
- moss, optional
- small plants, basket stuffers work well, plants with small flowers are nice like lobelia and alyssum 
- wood house (I'll explain more shortly)
- acrylic paint
- outdoor sealer

PROCEDURE:

The house is what makes the garden.

I have used unpainted ceramic houses that you purchase at Christmas time and then paint.  I turn the snow into moss and the wreath on the door into a summer wreath.  You can check out this post for more info on that.

Buying multiple class sets of ceramic houses doesn't work so well at school.

First off they are breakable.

They are also full of detail requiring a lot of time and patience. Not too mention the cost.  Just a little too expensive for a class project.


A few years ago I moved to these wooden houses.

This one is a little tall, (a 2 storey house) at school they are shorter about 4" tall.

I use a cedar timber.  One that would be used for fence making. (no pressure treated wood)

They tend to come in 8' lengths.  I can get a full class set out of 1 timber.  Cost wise it is about $23 or so.

Cut your 4" blocks and then cut the ends off to form the roof. I have a great carpenter (my father-in-law).

Another alternative is to use this kind of house.

This is a poetry project I use but the house is made from a 2"x4".  You alternate an angled cut with a straight cut and you get 2 houses.  The roof on this one is cardboard but you can use a piece of cedar shingle.

You can paint them separately and then nail the roof in place. These are much cheaper as a 2"x4" in an 8ft length costs about $3.00.

At school this is a 2 session project. 1 to paint the house and 1 to plant the garden.



With the cedar timber house I get students to paint the house colour first.

We then paint the roof black

and add the shingles. A nice grey colour makes a good shingle.

Hopefully the house is now dry.

It's time for the windows.  The secret to good windows is small brushes.  A small flat brush is easiest.  You use the straight edge of the brush to paint the straight edges of the window.

You may need to dry a side with a hair dryer before you can work on the next one.  An art teacher always needs more hair dryers and electrical outlets!!

Add a door, use the end of your paintbrush to dab on the doorknob.  You can add window panes.  To steady your hand make sure it rests on the house as you are painting those panes.

You can add some shrubs with a sponge or scrubby brush (old brush).

When dry add a coat of outdoor sealer.

A nice address sign adds a special touch.  Paint a flat rock white.  When dry you can use sharpie or paint (you need a tiny brush) to add the numbers.


Give it a coat of outside sealer as well.

Now it's time to plant.  Add some rocks to the bottom of your pot.

Plant your plants leaving a spot for your house.  At school kids were only able to use 3 plants due to space.

You can add some moss to fill in the spaces if you wish.

Another nice touch is a fence made from cut twigs.

You can add gravel for a path.  Place your house and sign rock and you are done.


Students didn't have a lot of room but quite a few still made a path with pebbles.

You can make this an indoor garden with small house plants. I plan on doing this so I can make that Fall garden (it's Canada and we are frosty in the Fall) and then switch it out to a Winter/Christmas scene.

The winners of the Fairy Garden books are:

Marcie Woods and Sangeeta Duorah.

Thanks everyone for entering.

I have another book giveaway next week and a great new project.
Have a good weekend!

Gail

Fairy Garden Book Giveaway

Wow, I blink and more than half the summer disappears.  What about all the work I was going to do.....well I guess that means it's been a good vacation.

I was asked by my friends at Skyhorse Publishing to review these books.  I love miniature gardens so  of course I said yes!

"Fairy Gardening: Creating Your Own Magical Miniature Garden" by Julie Bawden-Davis and Beverly Turner has lots of ideas for setting up little scenes.

I love this idea of changing them out for the seasons.  I am so doing a Halloween version this Fall. (why didn't I think of that, I can use my pumpkin idea)

The Christmas/winter garden idea they have will have to be an indoor one (gotta love Canadian winters).....it would be a great centrepiece for the Christmas table though.

There is also a section on the best mini plants to use. A great book to inspire you.

"Fairy Gardening 101" by Fiona McDonald has wonderful ideas for including the kiddos.




She also gives you the 'how to' on making your own furniture and accessories. A great resource.

The impromptu Fairy gardens and the "in the wild" ones are especially nice. Great to make on an afternoon hike this summer.

Both books are a treat and up for a giveaway.
If you want a chance to win you need to do one of the following:





- leave a comment on this post
- send me a direct email at thatartistwoman@shaw.ca
- like or comment on this post on my Facebook page.


I'll make the draw Friday Aug 14th/15. Canadian and US residents only please.
Thanks to Skyhorse Publishing for sponsoring this post.

If you are looking for more fairy garden love check out this pinterest collection.

I'll be back next time with tips and  ideas on how I do mini gardens at school.



Catch you later.......

Gail

Guest Post

Hi everyone,

I'm guest posting today over at Skip to my Lou

I'm keeping up with my shorebird theme.  Head over there to find out how to make papier mache version.

See you there.

Gail

Shorebirds

Summertime for me is spending time by the water. Whether at the cabin by the lake, visiting the coast or even just having time to walk by the river here in the city.


As a bird lover I'm immediately drawn to my feathered friends.  Sketching birds in plein air is challenging, they are always on the move. So it helps to be armed with a fast camera and lots of patience.

Don't rely entirely on photographs though, make little gesture sketches that record common poses. You can then refer back to those sketches and add birds into your  larger compositions.

This painting is a good journal project….

and this seagull is a painted paper collage.

Both projects use a blurry line technique.  In the past I used gel pens but their quality has gone up in recent years and it's getting harder to find ones that will bleed when hit with a water wash.

There are other options.  My favourite is the Stabilo pencil.  It's easy to draw with and works on paper, glass, plastic and metal. I have to buy mine at a fine art supply store and they are about $2.00 a piece.

You can also use a watercolour pencil. You get a similar blurry effect. They are not as soft as a stabilo so I find them a little harder to sketch with.

A charcoal pencil will give you a bit of blurriness, you can smudge them with your finger before adding the water wash to enhance this a bit.

Watercolour markers will also give you a blurry effect.  I use them often at school as they are on every student supply list. My only complaints are they can blur too much and you may lose definition in your sketch. The colour also changes and your black fades into blues and purples.

Materials Required:

- paper, you can use an art journal or a nice quality drawing paper.  At school I use this paper a lot. Although it is called white construction paper it's not a construction paper. It paints up nice. You don't get WC paper effects but it is a good alternative and it's cheap.  It's an amazing drawing paper (better than the so-called drawing paper most suppliers carry) and has enough tooth (rough surface) to take pastels (both oil and chalk) beautifully.
- pencil and eraser
- stabilo or alternative
- disk tempera
- acrylic or liquid tempera
- sponge
- glue
- sandpaper

Procedure:

Let's start with the journal page. Now I made a journal page but you can easily make this into a single page project.

Select a shorebird you would like to draw.

Here I sketched a spotted sandpiper.  I used some reference photos of mine and gesture sketches.  I added a piece of driftwood in the foreground to add interest and included the water in the background, (both of which were not in my photos).

Then I went over my sketch with my stabilo.  Sometimes I go straight in with the stabilo but this was a new composition and you cannot erase a stabilo.

Start adding colour.

I have lots of watercolour paint in my studio but I used disk tempera to show you can easily do this project at school. Disk tempera costs a fraction of what watercolour does and I'm always impressed with how far I can push it.

The secret here is to treat it like watercolour, use more water to fade out your washes. Now I paint around my sandpiper because of the stabilo, I want to control the blurriness as well as conserve my whites.

I add some colour to the bird. The stabilo starts to blur forming the shadows. I use straight brown and watered down brown to get my colour variation.

I also leave some areas with no paint for the white of the feathers.

A nice touch is to go back and add a touch of white on top of the paint, (extra feather detail, some waves in the water).

You can use white disk tempera which acts very much like gouache.
I also use PITT markers which are opaque white ink, acrylic markers, at school I might use white pencil crayon, white oil pastel, or even white chalk.

I add some clouds using white liquid tempera or white acrylic and a sponge.

I want to add some text,  because it's a sand piper I cut a letter "S" from some sandpaper.  Great textural element.

I made a pattern out of some scrap paper and then traced it on the back.

I want it to stand out a bit so I trace around it with a black crayon. This gives the "S" a nice black outline.

I glued it into place and added text with a fine sharpie pen.





Painted paper collage:

I take a piece of that nice paper and tape it down to my art board.

Using liquid tempera or acrylic I take a dark blue, a light blue, and a little white and paint the background.

I use this cross stroke a lot for backgrounds.  Start with the darkest colour and work your way down adding the lighter colours.

While the background is drying I painted the paper for the posts in the pier.



I use brown, black, and a little white acrylic or liquid tempera.

I need a scraper so I take an old gift card and cut it to the size I want.

The paper I'm using is a scrap of brown kraft paper.


 I dip the end of the scraper into a few colours.  I then spread it down the paper getting this nice effect that looks like weathered wood.


Set aside to dry.

Using the same technique as for the journal page paint another bird.

This is a seagull I photographed last year in Cape Breton and you can see I misjudged the size of paper I needed.  Oh well….we'll just add some legs.

Cut out the seagull and the posts.



It started off as being all one piece but I couldn't get it to look right.

So I cut them apart. I also added a little white for a highlight on top edge.


Glue into place.

Sponge on a few clouds and then glue the gull into place.





I hope this inspires you to make a few shorebirds of your own.

Take care everyone.

Gail

Giveaway Winners

The 3 winners of the adult colouring books are:

Carolynn , who left a comment on this blog
I love the Dad clay portraits. Kids do amazing things with great teaching! Keep up the great work!
Carolynn if you could email your mailing address to me at:
thatartistwoman@shaw.ca
Laura Hay Hamilton, who left a comment on Facebook
and Jenny Peck who sent me an email.

Thank everyone for entering, there will be a new giveaway next week.

Gail

Book Giveaway and Student Work

The end of the school year is finally upon us.



I have been finishing my last residencies as well as an onslaught of Father's Day workshops.  Here is just a small sampling of some of the student work over the last few weeks.

Here are some DAD clay portraits that were done with Grade 3 and Kindergarten.

Calgary Towers done with Grade 2.

Toucans with Grade 5.

Mini gardens with Grade 4.

Air dry clay portraits with grade 7 & 8.

So as summer vacation approaches I am looking forward to having time to paint and try out some new projects.

Children's colouring books are not as popular as they were when I was a kid but adult colouring books are now top sellers.

There is something soothing about filling in all those empty spaces with colour and it can provide inspiration for new art projects.

Skyhorse Publishing has several of these books available.

I love all the patterns and immediately the wheels started turning about how I was going to attempt some of these patterns as a mono print or collagraph.

I also like that the pages are perforated so you can remove them easily and add them to your visual journal or put them on display.

Sample pages are provided at the front of the books to give you colour combo ideas.

The back of the book has colour bar space to try out these combinations before adding them to the designs.

Each book has 46 designs for you to colour.


I have 3 of these great books up for grabs.  If you are interested in winning one of these to enjoy over summer vacation please enter by one of the following ways:

- leave a comment on this blog post
- email me directly at thatartistwoman@shaw.ca
- like or comment on this post on my Facebook page

I will make the draw on Friday June 19th/15.

Good luck everyone and thanks to Skyhorse Publishing for sponsoring this great giveaway.

Gail