Fibers and Flowers for your hair

 I have been working a lot with fibers lately. I am making a line of hair accessories. I am using, yarns ,silk flowers, feathers and beads work for a new bunch of hair clippies.I also make hair falls on elastic.

These clips are on sale on my my new tribaltrends.etsy.com shop and others have been avalable on the sculptresslink shop for awhile now

here are some pics.

One of my new line of floral hair clip fascinator's  "Big Orange Bloom" from the Tribal Trends shop was added to a treasury.

This traesury was put together by  Melissa from

HoneyBeeHolistics

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/Njg2NjIwNXw0NDIyNDY3Njk/autumn-is-my-favorite-seasonhttp://www.etsy.com/people/HoneyBeeHolistics?ref=pr_profile

Summer camp week one!

 For the summer I go from 5 part time part time jobs ( yes five:1. private lessons,2. before school care, 3.after school care,4. subbing 6 districts and 5.working weekends at the Memorial art gallery teaching and coordinating plus 6 if you count the etsy shops) to one full time position. I am the Art day School Coordinator for the  Memorial Art gallery's Creative workshop. Last week I got to be a teacher for week one. I conducted a lesson called "BIG Paintings". We worked on three mural projects, one large poster size painting, and made several large paintings on paper.

I used a PDF file from a art teachers blog called "Art Projects For Kids" I downloaded the PDF file"Ode  to Matisse" and printed it out twice one on card stock and once on copy paper. I had 12 students in each class so this 24 piece project had just the right number of pieces. Each student got one 8x10 inch piece to paint. I let student pick there own colors then they had to talk to the other people whose pieces touched theirs to make sure to same shapes had the same colors. It forced them to talk to one another and work together.We used acrylic paints to paint these.The second copy students used at the end of the week and colored it in with oil pastels.

We looked at images of Matisse drawing, his painting, his stained glass designs and cut outs in book and on the internet.

We worked with tempera and acrylic paints. We also touched about different types and brushes different painting mediums and what they all do. We used foam brushes, foam rollers, fan brushes, mop brushes, liner brush, flay and round brushes.I demonstrated each brush and told them how to use each one and why each brush was called that. I also talked about mixing colors and getting to right amount of water on your brush proper rinsing and watching out for your neighbors while painting. After the demo I let them loose on large paper 18" x 24" paper and encouraged them to make abstract paintings with tempera. I brought in some examples of my own abstract paintings to hang up and we went to the gallery and looked at the several examples there.


Here are some examples of students work.

I  put up large paper on the bulletin board walls in the classroom and traced each students body with a pencil onto the large paper. I was trying to make students bodies over lap so the the image would like like they posed for one big class photograph.Students painted in their bodies and their clothing.We did a one day lesson on facial proportion and how to draw facial features correctly and to scale as well as hair then student s could start painting in their faces.

Here's a section of the seniors wall mural (students ages 9-13)

In addition to the murals students created their own paintings where they traced their arms. For seniors I gave the kids their "homework" of choosing their favorite belongings and making them arranged all over the floor like they just spread all their favorite things out on the floor and were grabbing for them.

Here are some examples

For juniors we did a variation of this were students traced their arms and then use layers and acrylic and gel medium to put their arms in an environment that they like grass and swimming in water.

We also experimented with using sand as texture medium.

So it is finally summer

 I  have been struggling through this last few days of school with Bursitis in my hip I finally go in for the Cortisone shot today. I am not sure what this will  mean for the all the dance rehearsals and performances we have scheduled for the Tribal Goddess Collective. I have some art shows booked and will be teaching/ coordinating the summer camp at the art gallery starting this upcoming Monday. I really need to spend this weekend preparing. I have spent the last few days just trying to heal and laying on ice packs.

I have been working on a second etsy shop called Tribal Trends. Me and my fellow dance sisters are posting tribal dance accessories for sale in this shop.Above is one pair of the chandelier style beaded earrings I have been making for this new shop.

Trying to reach the untouchable kid

 There are some kids who just do not want to do anything. They would rather crumple up paper or doodle... The doodling I am not opposed to if other things are completed.  But wasting paper arrrrgh!

I try to find ways to take this "time wasting" and make it into something productive.Being a substitute teacher means an entire day of mostly just putting kids back in line and dealing with behavior issues. Some days it has little to do with making art or teaching. I try to reach those kids that have already decided they don't want to be reached. The kids that gave up on trying... It is a real challenge especially when subbing. Kids know they may never see you again, you can't always call their parents and you most times you can't write them up bad behavior because you do not have referral forms. With longer sub jobs I do call parents and do write up. Short term I  leave detailed noted for teachers to address issues I figure they have more leverage then me.

So anyways today, these kids were just crumpling up paper and throwing in the garbage trying to make baskets. I took one of them off the floor. I took an oil pastel did a texture rubbing of it and then used the folds to direct my art. Of of the kids said that it reminded her of a seed pod.(she had just been working on her science homework...so I guess that was the connection). It was a study hall I did not manage to get them to try it but at least I gave myself an outlet and inspired conversations with middle schools kids that briefly that were not about dating other middle school kids. I used a few more of these crumpled sheets of paper through out the day and used oil pastel rubbing the peeks of the folded paper with oil pastel kids would talk to me about what I was doing and ask the questions art subs often get asked like: "What are you doing?""Are you a real artist or are you a real art teacher?"

New esty stuff-great gift ideas for grads!

Looking for a great gift for a grad? Want a handmade original for that special someone?

Check out my sculptresslink  etsy shop for polymer clay jewelery and hair clips or my new etsy shop tribaltrends for beadwork and belly dance accessories

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Stamped polymer clay "Taunting skeleton pendent"

                                               Quartz crystal pendent set in polymer clay

                                  Bamboo sets of chopsticks for your hair with polymer clay tips.
 

                                                                  feathered hair clip

                                                        Tulle and organza hair bow

Guest art teacher atHamiedye academy

Over this last  school year I have, amongst my other jobs, been working at a small private Islamic academy as the guest art teacher. I went in to the school using their lunch room to teach in. I brought all the art supplies with me. The first session met at the art gallery and students looked at works of art as well as working on a brief drawing of objects discussing contour and gesture drawing styles.

Other future sessions included poetry along with painting, cartooning, painting with tempera, drawing and clay work.The cartooning session I had posted earlier in the year and was  the one post with the snowmen.

The most recent completed project was ceramic clay tiles I rolled slabs in advance with a slab roller. I cut the slabs into square and rectangular pieces then I also used a pencil to make holes in the top of each tile shape.

We used red clay for the tiles then used white clay and a dark brown color clay. I showed students how to slip and score how to roll coils and how to use premade hand carved ceramic stamps on clay to make texture. These clay tiles are currently on display at the Memorial art Gallery's Creative Workshop Lucy Burne gallery.