Home Sweet Home at children's festival

The Kaleidoscope Children's Festival was a blast of fun this year. 
I started out with small wooden houses cut from 2x4s and 
then the kids did their own thing.... 


they drew with permanent markers.....
wrote names of special people in their lives....
added pets and special stuff surrounding them.... 
covered walls with textures and paint....
and voila... each created their home sweet home!

We live in a great country!  What a wonderful place to call home!

I love turtles

The phase of the moon was perfect and the turtles came 
out to lay their eggs.... This was an amazing site to see 
and on one stretch of our back highway we saw five 
female snapping turtles. Beautiful!

Some of these ladies live to 150 years!

prayer flags with Mom

Made prayer flags with Mom and friends at
the long term care facility.  The crayon rubbing
backgrounds were fun and everyone had 
a different sentiment to share.... 
They will be hanging in their courtyard 
soon! 

Art-athon this June

I'm thrilled to be one of the guest instructors

for the "Creativity Cafe's" first virtual 21-day 

Art-athon, from June 4th to June 25th. 

Find out more at:

http://artathon21.weebly.com/

Each day a different artist takes you 

on an hour-long creativity journey. It doesn't 

matter what your talent or skill level is. It's all 

about  experiencing the sheer joy of creative 

expression! 

The Art-athon includes a wide range of creative

media from intuitive painting and writing, mask 

making, printmaking, poetry and sculpting. 

Topics include "Solve the Empty Page Syndrome:

Turn on Your Writing Flow,"Creating Your 

Mess-terpiece: Embracing ChallengeThrough 

the Artistic Process," "Figure it out: Printmaking 

Project," and "Journey to Your Sacred Object"

flags of empathy

Just worked with a great bunch of grade 7-8 students
making flags of empathy.
The idea was based on the premise of prayer flags
and the kids did wonderful work.....

We did the printed symbols with adhesive fun 

foam on wood blocks.  Many of the symbols 

were from Adinkra ( African)

The flags will fly outside the school and also be 

shown at a Muskoka Chataqua in June. 

salt and flour hearts

Back to that old elementary school recipe we
used for making maps complete with whole mountain
ranges.  This time it was rolled out and individual
hearts were cut out and decorated. My class had
fun with buttons, beads, ribbon and paint! 

The recipe is easy.  Mix 1 cup salt, 

4 cups flour and 1 1/2 cups water. 

Roll out, cut into shapes and bake 

at 300 F for half and hour or until 

hard.   When cool, decorate with

glue, paint, fabric etc.

recovering nicely

My Mom was a great upholsterer.  I watched but never
tried..... until now!  And I had so much fun.  This chair
is just the beginning!

 It even has studs!

And this is what it looked like in the thrift shop.....

felted gems

I have been knitting and felting lately.  These little change purses were
created with felted pieces from knitting and also from shrunken sweaters
bought at thrift shops.

translucent collage tutorial

I worked with my class this week to make

translucent sandwiches with bits of yarn, fabric, 

thread and ribbon between waxed paper and 

kleenex.

The results were fun and now comes the 

chance to cut them up for use in cards, 

mixed media work and collage. 

Fringe coloured magazine sheets to make fun confetti.

Sprinkle these over a sheet of waxed paper. Add fabric and other tidbits.

Next place a one ply layer of kleenex over the cut up bits on waxed paper.

Gently cover whole collage with mix of 1/2 water and 1/2 white glue.

Let dry then display!

knit bombing

I never really 'got' the idea of knitting bombing until
I saw this bicycle at our art gallery.  Wow, is that cool!
Makes me want to do some knit bombing on something
at home.... maybe.....my aerial and car door handles!

Yarnbombing, yarnstorming, guerrilla knitting, or graffiti knitting 

is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted 

or crocheted cloth rather than paint or chalk. (Wikipedia)