Bullet Journal Pages 146-147

One week of somewhat continuity and then two days of chaos. Some weeks I decide to just use one kind of pen and then other times I want no rules in my Bullet Journal

Art Journal Page 2/25/15 - Pink Neighborhood

I'm a little late getting my Valentine themed neighborhood into my Art Journal. I've had the houses done for quite some time. I just haven't had much time to work in the studio. But today was the day. And I'm rather pleased with how it came out.

For these pages, I began by squirting pink and white paint onto the pages.

I then spread the paint around with a credit card. This is a fun way to mix paint while leaving it still sort of splotchy and not too well mixed together.

After the paint had dried, I laid out all the elements where I wanted them. (The houses were all made using THIS METHOD). I then adhered them to the paper with Mod Podge.

Now that's A LOT of pink! :)

Heart Paper Chain and Heart In a Heart Tutorials

We made these in Art Class yesterday so I thought I'd add some tutorials here:

HEART CHAIN TUTORIAL

HEART IN A HEART IN A HEART TUTORIAL

First Friday Art Class for February 2013 - Love Notes

Today's class was all about LOVE...and specifically Love Notes.

Here's what we did in picture form and then I'll give you some more details below as well as some picture tutorials of some of the projects.

1. We wrote the word "LOVE" without picking up our pens. We practiced this several times in our lettering notebooks. This was a fun warm up.

2. Next we made envelopes out of heart. I used THIS printable and I printed it once at regular size, once at 60% and once at 50%. So in the end we got some really tiny envelopes.

3. We made books out of one sheet of paper. HERE'S HOW WE DID IT. Again we started with a full 8-1/2" x 11", but then we got smaller.

We even put covers on them.

4. For a simple up-cycle project we made bookmarks from old junk mail envelopes. HERE'S HOW TO DO IT.

5. When I showed my daughter my idea for our last project, she said "too easy" and didn't think the girls would be very interested. Wrong! They loved it and, as usual, took the idea and totally ran with it and made it their own! I will post a separate tutorial on just the heart chain and heart inside a heart HERE.

We had a great class with lots of fun and laughter. I'm so glad I get to spend time with these sweet girls!! See you next month.

Mmmmmm-Valentine Treat

Mine are nowhere near as pretty as hers, but I made Bakerella's Cake Balls for Valentine's Day and they are GOOOOOOD!!!

I used chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting and dipped them in melted chocolate chips with a bit of shortening to thin it down.

So yummy!!

Craft Therapy

My daughter was a bit down yesterday because her brother had a couple (very noisy) friends over and her friend couldn't come. So I suggested we do a bit of crafting. I saw this tutorial and knew she would like this project. We had so much fun making these. But after we were done she said, "Mom, the crafting did cheer me up, but next week can I have a friend over??" :)

We tied a little bead at the bottom of each garland to sort of weigh them down. 

Sweet Heart

Using this great tutorial my daughter and I made this fun wreath last night. I don't have a lot of Valentine decorations so I'm always happy to find something fun, quick and cute. This heart wreath certainly fit the bill!

The only thing I had to buy was the foam heart. The rest I had on hand--I LOVE that!

Arts and Crafts Class Today

Here's what we did today.

First, we painted plaster hearts. I used this activity as a way to introduce color mixing with the kids. I brought red, yellow, and blue paint and had them mix the other colors. I also brought white, black, gold and silver. They always love the gold and silver!

I made the hearts ahead of time with Plaster of Paris in a heart ice tray.


The kids had a great time painting them and they came out with some beautiful colors! Who knew mixing gold and black paint could be so pretty?

Our second project for today were these cute little Tootsie Pop Butterflies. I glue the eyes on the suckers before hand and for this class I also cut out the wings because I have a lot of kindergartners in there. The kids painted the wings and had a lot of fun twisting the pipe cleaner antnnae.

(This is my daughter, Peyton, holding up a pair of cuties she made for Girl Scouts. She did these with markers instead of paint.)

Spring Art Class for Kids

I can't believe it's time already to start the Spring Enrichment classes at the kids' school. I'm teaching arts and crafts again. We had so much fun the in fall doing lots of Halloween and Thanksgiving crafts.

This term we'll be doing some Valentine crafts then move onto Spring and Easter--we'll have to do some bunnies and chicks.

Today we made these little key chains. So simple, but the kids just loved putting them on their backpacks as zipper pulls!



Then we made these paper hearts. I found some cool DCWV Border Punch Strips. I just cut the strips in half lengthwise for the hearts. (That saved me a TON of time!)

The kids loved these. Also very simple, but I've got several kindergarteners in there so I try to keep things at their level. They all did all their own stapling and enjoyed making large ones and tiny ones!

New Folk Paintings Listed on ETSY

The sun finally came out and I got some paintings photographed. These are all available in my ETSY store right now...SOLD. Am I in the Valentine's spirit or what?

The top three are little mini ones. They are 3.25" x 3". The Tree of Hearts is 7" x 3". And the last one is 4.25" x 6".

Fun Valentines Items on E-bay and ETSY

Just listed a few new items on e-bay and ETSY for Valentines Day.

LOVE Block Set on ETSY

LOVE Block on ETSY

LOVE Block on E-Bay

Group Shot of these along with some others that have sold and the large LOVE panel in the back that I'm keeping for myself. :-)