Prism Progress and Kids Art
I am so excited today because I got a chance to cut out the triangles for my next two hexagon rings in the Patchwork Prism Quilt Along. I know that Bianca's next post on cutting is not until May 8, but since I am using scraps and fabric on hand, it is slow going.
Slow going, because this is my process for each color ring: find all the orange fabric I can, cut out, assemble, go through fabric again, sew together the triangles that are actually two pieces, try to think of another place I might find one more bit of orange, cut, assemble, fold and put away all the orange.
I love how every ring has some light and medium tones that combine to make their own little hexies. I already replaced one purple triangle because it was too light, and I think I am going to have to replace that other light one with something darker.
I am following Anna Maria's colors for this, except that I combined the yellow and orange rings so I can separate aqua and turquoise into their own rings. I am usually into cool colors, but I am liking these warm colors today. Sorry for the bad picture, but I was not about to move this to a better spot for photographing!
As a matter of fact, I am toying with the idea of sewing the rows together. I am so bad at keeping rows organized. I know you can pin & number them, but it just freaks me out to pack them up. Can you see how I am just cutting into precious fabric left & right? Out of Print Heather Ross and AMH Good Folks!
In other weekend news, we had an art extravaganza yesterday.
I keep art ideas on my Kid Art Pinterest board. I would say I definitely try more of these than anything else on Pinterest. This one has been pinned from a bunch of different places and some reference the idea coming from Family Fun Magazine. In any case you draw with glue, shake on some salt to cover (like using glitter), drop liquid watercolor onto the salt and watch it spread down the glue lines.
My kids love to use glue and the eye droppers for art are always a hit. I think Will went through half a bottle of glue.
Once they had explored the glue and salt to their hearts' content we switched to shaving cream. They love a big canvas of shaving cream spread on a paper plate. Again with the eye (medicine?) droppers and liquid watercolors.
This required pretty close supervision, but everything cleaned up nicely. Gotta love water-based paints!
I thought I would show you how we organize art/writing supplies. I am grateful to have a kitchen cabinet devoted to their stuff. We are the third owner of our home. The first owners had an alcove built in the kitchen to accommodate some huge piece of furniture. The second owners, not possessing a huge piece of furniture to go there, installed more cabinetry in the space. I am so glad they did. Can you ever have enough cabinets? The only catch is that these are so deep, they almost have unusable space in the back. Some day I might invest in some pull out shelves or something more efficient. But that is way down the list of home improvements!
Up on the top shelf are green trays for messy projects (should have used these today!) and all kinds of paper goes in them to be at the ready. To the right is a big box of stamps and ink pads. These are all washable, so I don't mind them being accessible. The middle shelf holds activity books, writing/math workbooks, sticker books, drawing pads, the dry erase quiet books I made, etc. The tubs to the right and behind the books hold stuff I don't want the boys to get into without me: glue, glitter, pompoms, googly eyes, glitter glue, melty beads, etc. For now, they cannot open those tubs unassisted! Finally the bottom shelf holds more tubs with markers and crayons (they know how to open these), our beloved colored masking tape and our big box of supplies. The supplies box has mini blank books, stencils, stickers, washable watercolor sets, safety scissors and hole punches.
You can see it is not all beautifully organized and color coordinated. We just re-use boxes and containers we don't need anymore. I would like to cover those shoe boxes in some fun contact paper, though.
On the door I have used some sturdy envelopes to hold word games, alphabet & number cheat sheets (from the amazing book, Playful Learning), and cardboard scraps (because we constantly have to make cardboard daggers, seriously). I do hope to find something better for long term here, but these envelopes certainly fit the budget! As Jack progresses with reading and writing I hope to add more writing activities on the other side.
So that is about it. I do keep a box of the really messy stuff (tempera paint, powders, liquid watercolors, pastels) up high in the garage. I thought it might be helpful to show you how we try to corral everything, and what I try to make available for them to explore on their own. I am always up for suggestions, so if you've found a great idea for art storage or accessibility, I would LOVE to hear it!
Hope you are enjoying your weekend! xo, Courtney
Slow going, because this is my process for each color ring: find all the orange fabric I can, cut out, assemble, go through fabric again, sew together the triangles that are actually two pieces, try to think of another place I might find one more bit of orange, cut, assemble, fold and put away all the orange.
I love how every ring has some light and medium tones that combine to make their own little hexies. I already replaced one purple triangle because it was too light, and I think I am going to have to replace that other light one with something darker.
I am following Anna Maria's colors for this, except that I combined the yellow and orange rings so I can separate aqua and turquoise into their own rings. I am usually into cool colors, but I am liking these warm colors today. Sorry for the bad picture, but I was not about to move this to a better spot for photographing!
As a matter of fact, I am toying with the idea of sewing the rows together. I am so bad at keeping rows organized. I know you can pin & number them, but it just freaks me out to pack them up. Can you see how I am just cutting into precious fabric left & right? Out of Print Heather Ross and AMH Good Folks!
In other weekend news, we had an art extravaganza yesterday.
I keep art ideas on my Kid Art Pinterest board. I would say I definitely try more of these than anything else on Pinterest. This one has been pinned from a bunch of different places and some reference the idea coming from Family Fun Magazine. In any case you draw with glue, shake on some salt to cover (like using glitter), drop liquid watercolor onto the salt and watch it spread down the glue lines.
My kids love to use glue and the eye droppers for art are always a hit. I think Will went through half a bottle of glue.
Once they had explored the glue and salt to their hearts' content we switched to shaving cream. They love a big canvas of shaving cream spread on a paper plate. Again with the eye (medicine?) droppers and liquid watercolors.
This required pretty close supervision, but everything cleaned up nicely. Gotta love water-based paints!
I thought I would show you how we organize art/writing supplies. I am grateful to have a kitchen cabinet devoted to their stuff. We are the third owner of our home. The first owners had an alcove built in the kitchen to accommodate some huge piece of furniture. The second owners, not possessing a huge piece of furniture to go there, installed more cabinetry in the space. I am so glad they did. Can you ever have enough cabinets? The only catch is that these are so deep, they almost have unusable space in the back. Some day I might invest in some pull out shelves or something more efficient. But that is way down the list of home improvements!
Up on the top shelf are green trays for messy projects (should have used these today!) and all kinds of paper goes in them to be at the ready. To the right is a big box of stamps and ink pads. These are all washable, so I don't mind them being accessible. The middle shelf holds activity books, writing/math workbooks, sticker books, drawing pads, the dry erase quiet books I made, etc. The tubs to the right and behind the books hold stuff I don't want the boys to get into without me: glue, glitter, pompoms, googly eyes, glitter glue, melty beads, etc. For now, they cannot open those tubs unassisted! Finally the bottom shelf holds more tubs with markers and crayons (they know how to open these), our beloved colored masking tape and our big box of supplies. The supplies box has mini blank books, stencils, stickers, washable watercolor sets, safety scissors and hole punches.
You can see it is not all beautifully organized and color coordinated. We just re-use boxes and containers we don't need anymore. I would like to cover those shoe boxes in some fun contact paper, though.
On the door I have used some sturdy envelopes to hold word games, alphabet & number cheat sheets (from the amazing book, Playful Learning), and cardboard scraps (because we constantly have to make cardboard daggers, seriously). I do hope to find something better for long term here, but these envelopes certainly fit the budget! As Jack progresses with reading and writing I hope to add more writing activities on the other side.
So that is about it. I do keep a box of the really messy stuff (tempera paint, powders, liquid watercolors, pastels) up high in the garage. I thought it might be helpful to show you how we try to corral everything, and what I try to make available for them to explore on their own. I am always up for suggestions, so if you've found a great idea for art storage or accessibility, I would LOVE to hear it!
Hope you are enjoying your weekend! xo, Courtney
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