Easy, affordable ornaments/ hanging sculptures

 I have been making ornaments with my students in the art gallery program and the after school program. I even used the first one as a station project when substitute teaching for art. These are quick easy and affordable.

primary color scheme ornament

 The first one is a paper ornament. Any paper will do but card stock will work the best .You could also recycle thin card board boxes from tissue or cereal(already patterned on one side, less coloring).  These are two same size circles sliced in half and and the slices slide together. I traced the bottom of a cup for these ones. I use one piece of  scotch tape where the pieces connect then pop it back put 1 hole punch at the top of the bottom circle which has the slit facing upward to hang the ornament. If you are making a couple tracing the circles is easy enough. For use in the classroom I recommend tracing a sheet of circles drawing the slits and using the copier to run sheets of circles and then cut them in groups of twos.

Secondary color scheme ornament

Step 1 Trace circles
Step 2 Cut out circles
Step 3 Color front and back of circles with markers, crayons. pencils etc.
 Step 4 Slide slits together
Step 5 Hole punch the top of the bottom circle( the one with the slits facing up)
Step 6  Tie yarn or ribbon through the hole
Step 7 Secure center circles with small piece of clear scotch tape or white glue where they meet up.




 Card board tube ornaments

Cardboard tube ornament painted with acrylics

 Thinner cut version of ornament

 These project uses card board tubes from paper towel or toilet paper.  You can choose to cut the tube into  thicker pieces 1 inch to 2 or thin1/2 inch pieces.  I have included pictures of a few finished ones to give you some ideas.


Step1   Choose to make an ornament with 3,4,5 or 6 pieces.

Three piece ornament

Five piece ornament

 

Six piece ornament

Step 2  Press the tube flat to make the cutting easier, cut the piece of the tube so they are all the same size.
Step3   Hole punch the pieces at one end in the middle of the piece.
Step 4  Decorate the cardboard pieces with paint, markers etc.
Step 5   Thread yarn or ribbon through the holes and tie them tight together so they pop out.
Step 6  Choose the top the the ornament and tie a loop of yarn or ribbon through it to hang it from.

The thing I like about these is that they fast, easy and can be personalized any way you want. These do not have to be a "holiday project." They are good for gifts, party favors, or for teaching: color schemes, 3d vs 2d,spatial reasoning, numbers and counting, sculptural elements and positive and negative space.

ho ho holidays

So the holidays are upon us and the holiday crafting with the kids started in Dec 1st. I will not recap on all that we have done but here are two quickies you can try with your little ones to let them make some things they can give as gifts.

Stamped wrapping paper use plain white butcher paper or news print sheets. You can use some sponge stamps and paint or some foam or rubber stamps and stamp pads. The example below use chunky foam stamps I found at A.C. Moore for $1.00,or go after the 26th and get them on discount for a lot less then save for future projects) I also picked up some $1.00 stamp pads.

 

Pop up cards. Use basic construction paper and fold into four equal sections. On the inside fold cut two small slits about one inch apart. Use another color of construction paper and cut out small trees, stars or other shapes then "pop up" or pull the cut section up and away from the top layer and glue the shape onto the fold of that section.

Paper pots

I was fortunate enough to be a teaching artist for a family day event at the Memorial Art gallery for the Native American family day last weekend. I wanted to share with you the project that we did and a few finished examples of it. I used some construction paper to create a template which I then scanned and was printed onto card stock so that participants could cut the template, decorate the cut out shape then fold on the lines to create their own small paper pots. We had images of Native American south west pottery there to serve as inspiration and some finished examples. These are the full page templates that you can print out.

The Turduckin..

We set out the make a turkey Pinata for Thanksgiving.. He ended up looking kind of duck like... so some of the staff and I were calling him the Turduckin. Anyways, the kids had fun making him and we will break him open after the holiday break. We used a balloon again like we did for the Halloween Pinatas and we used a cardboard tube to build the neck and paper towels to cover the body and make it brown. Legs, feet and face details were added later with construction paper.

Happy Thanksgiving

I played with my Paint software today! Use of oval tool,brush tool, marker tool and the paint bucket.... Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone.. be thankful and, gobble gobble.

Happy veterans day

This is another paper plate wreath using my bingo markers some construction paper and the Martha Stuart circle punch I let two girls use their imagination and create a poppy wreath for veterans day.

Haunted House

Twice a year I make these graham cracker houses. I make them at Halloween time with Halloween candy then again at Christmas time with holiday candy.I used chocolate grahams for the Haunted house. The graham crackers are "glued" together into a box shape with frosting.I used full sheets of crackers for this townhouse. I prefer using half sheets for Christmas so it looks more like a cottage house. Then two cracker half's are put at an angle to create the roof. Its kinda like when you build a house of cards.Broken cracker crumbs created the "grave stones" the "sidewalk" and the "dirt". I usually build the house on cardboard sheets with aluminum foil or in this case plastic wrap over them. Best to use something disposable.

Pumpkin collages

This a quick one day project you can finish it in under a half hour.Prep time goes quick with use of a paper cutter. I cut orange construction paper into strips 1 to 2 inches wide and smaller strips of green paper. Students had a choice of stacking strips horizontally or vertically and rounding off the edges to create the shape of their pumpkin. some choose to let the black background paper show through and others did not. I let the students choose if their pumpkins would have a face or not.

Halloween pin'ata's

I made some paper mache pinata with my after school kids. We used an air filled balloons for the molds.We created a mummy putting the large part upward for the head and then we put the large put facing down to create a pumpkin. The mummy is two layers of white torn paper. The jack o lantern is torn paper with fringe cut orange tissue paper.The faces are made with construction paper.

skulls !!!!!!

I don't know if you like skulls but I do and my sculptresslink etsy shop is full of them.

These are hair accessories and jewelry all skull wear made from polymer clay by me and are available for purchase on sculptresslink.etsy.com

Ceramic jack o lantern

This is a simple fairly simple clay project that you could probably do with older elementary students say in 4th or 5th grade. I made it is part of a hand building clay class I am taking. This was made with two pinch pots one stacked on top of the other. A coil was rolled and put over the seam then smoothed out. I made the lines on the pumpkin with a oval shaped chopstick but the rounded edge of a Popsicle stick would probably do. After the bisque firing I just used a orange acrylic paint on it and let parts of the stoneware color of the clay show through on the lines and the stem.A hole was cut in the bottom and on Halloween I am going to out a battery powered tea light in it. You could also vary this to be a pumpkin and skip the Halloween holiday edge then it could be a table topper for thanksgiving or other fall occasions as well.Just be sure if making the pumpkin variation that you cut a hole in the top or bottom to let the air out before firing.

I just love fall! I get so much inspiration from this season. The sights, the sounds the colors. I love picking pumpkins and painting/ carving them. I love hayrides, long walks to see the changing leaves and warm apple cider. So I have been working on a series of different fall themed drawings with students. For my Saturday classes for 7-10 year olds we have been creating fall scenes using markers. We talked about how to get different values out of the marker color be varying the pressure you apply on the marker. We also have a small how to draw a pumpkin tutorial and a discussion on horizon line and foreground, background and middle ground. We discussed how items in the front are larger then items in the back.

I created another variation of a marker drawing. The one below was draw with water based markers then a used a brush and brushed water back into it for a more water color effect.

leaf wreaths

This project is a great green project and uses not that many materials. You will need paper plates, scissors, brown paper bag/craft or construction paper, markers, glue stick. Step 1 use a common every day paper plate

Step 2 fold cut the ring off the outside of the plate fold it in half and cut out the inside.

Step 3 fold construction paper in half twice or use a still folded brown paper bag and cut leaf shapes.

Step 4 draw veins on leaves with a variety of colored markers

Step 5 Use a glue stick or bottle of white glue. Glue larger leaves onto ring so that they stick out past the end of the ring.

Step 6 Continue gluing leaves so that they overlap. Fill the entire ring.

Raven masks

These raven masks are made from construction paper. I usually read students the book "The Raven" by Gerald McDermott before we read the book.

. The mask is of folded red construction paper and I usually fold the paper in half width wise and from the fold measure in about one inch then cut a one inch slot while the paper is folded for the eye. for the beak I fold a piece of black paper in half length wise and cut a curved edge on one side while paper in still folded glue stick that side together. On the opposite side that connects to the face paper cut the center fold and fold two tabs about 1/2 inch in width line up the center folds on the two pieces of paper open the black piece into a triangular shape and glue stick onto the back ground. Hole punch with a single hole punch the side just below the eyes. Tie yarn into the hole punches in order to tie mask around face. Kids love it!

I have been experimenting with tissue paper and collaging with it.I had red and blue left from my project based on the "There are Cats in this Books project" I also found orange paper when I was at the drug store. This entire piece is made with torn pieces of construction paper and a glue and water mixture.

Greek yogurt cup topiary

Check this out. I am preparing for a kids sculpture class I will be teaching in Fall/winter. So I looked around my house to see what recycled reusable supplies I have that I can make sculpture from. These are Greek Yogurt cups from Wegemans. First I hot glued the first two cups base to base then glued the center cups rim to rim. I had to apply several coats of paint in order to cover the text printed on the cup.I think all and all it was six coats of paint. Note: If you use the Cobani yogurt cups they have a label that you can peel off,no text to paint over.The topiary part is a standard four inch Styrofoam ball and the silk flowers are from the dollar store hot glued on. Great fall decoration!

watercolor sunsets

oil pastel and watercolor

 I did this project twice in one day with different materials available. I was substitute teaching and had oil pastels available and as the  step to a project to later be finished later with their teachers  students made oil pastels hills and used the wet on wet technique to create sunset landscapes.

crayon and watercolor

In my after school program we have only crayons available but tried the same project we also look at images from Tomie dePaola's "The Legend of Indian Paintbrush" for some inspiration. These books are illustrated with watercolor and are great examples of how to use the medium.

This is a kindergarten example

"Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons"

my example

 We read Pete The Cat and his four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin Created and illustrated by James Dean. The projects Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons based on this book was pretty simple just making button shirts to go with the book.I folded construction paper in half to make symmetrical t- shirt cuts and pre-cut the shirts and the buttons for the kids.

In the book the Cat has a shirt with four big bright buttons on it but one by one they pop off.
We focused on the buttons being on the shirt for the project but I also thought that we could have done this with pipe cleaners and some tape so the buttons actually popped off the paper shirt back ground.

Of course in this project as with any variation in the projects in pretty interesting. Some kids colored the shirts while other did not and some only wanted three buttons, some did not want the buttons in normal button placement.

 

More new handmade jewelry on my etsy shops

So if you have been following my blog of my Facebook page for awhile your will know that in addition to teaching and running the sculptresslink etsy page I also have a second etsy shop called tribaltrends.

on the tribaltrends page i have created a shop for hair fascinator, tassel items and beaded jewelery. The sculptresslink shop will continue to carry jewelry that I made the beads and pendants from clay or wood and the tribal trends shop uses more purchased crafting materials. So here are some new etsy shop items.

on sculptresslink.etsy.com we are getting ready for fall and my favorite holiday Halloween.

On tribaltrends we are keeping up with tassel jewelery