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

Mother Natures Closet at Stella Art Gallery and Studio

This last Friday was the opening of Mother Nature's Closet a show of recycled clothing and accessories. I submitted several pieces for the exhibit as did many other local artisans.

Above is a room screen with accessories hanging on a piece of shelf liner. There are several pairs of my wooden popsicle stick earrings on it. The piece to the right is one of my college creations I made this in 2003-2004 as a graduate student at University of Arizona. I call this piece"What it Takes to Feed America"I was inspired by the colored caps of my water bottles. The bodice piece is a piece of fabric that showed upholstery samples. I used acrylic paint for the flesh tone and used broken earrings, children's toys and embroidery for the decorative embellishments.

This jacket is a piece I also made in college from 2002-2003 I was a student at SUNY Brockport at the time. The jacket is called "The Weight of the World on my Back" The pieces has acrylic paints,puffy paints, and sewn onto it are plastic toy soldiers, antique cake toppers, and plastic cowboys and Indians etc. Behind the jacket are recycled purses by local Rochester artist Eva who has an etsy shop called Faerie Tails. Local Rochester artist Elisabeth Freeman exhibited some upcycled wares as well.

I also exhibited some of my eggshell mosaic pendants and some of my recent mixed media ceramic wall hangings.

I don't want to give to much away but would encourage you to do see the show yourself at Stella Art Studio in East Rochester across from the Piano Works plaza.

dot collages Based on the book "Press Here"

Based on the book "Press Here" by Herve Tullet . I used my newly purchased Martha Steward circle paper punch and created red yellow and red dots to collage into patterns. I gotta tell you I have gotta a lot of use from that paper punch.

A kindergarten students art work

Egg shell mosaic pendants

I was invited to be a part of a show called "Mothers Natures Closet" at my friends studio Stella Art Gallery and studio. This show features pieces that are wearable or are fashion accessories. The show opens this Friday and will be up until the end of September I made up some new eggshell mosaic pendants for the show. So after two days of eating hard boiled eggs for lunch and peeling the membrane from the shell and washing and drying to shells. I made some new pendants. I was working on a black and white theme for a client and went with black polymer clay and white shells.

Step one hard boil and peel membrane from eggshell Step 2 Wash and dry egg shell Step 3 Roll out polymer clay pendant and cut to shape. Step 4 Put down an area of liquid polymer on top of polymer clay pendant shape. step 5 Choose a piece of eggshell and press it gently into liquid polymer. step 6 Using a tool break the piece of eggshell into smaller pieces so it sticks in the liquid polymer. step 7 Bake the piece for approx 5 minutes step 8 Sand wet wet dry sand paper if needed Step 9 Apply multiple layers of Sculpey glaze or clear nail polish