'Collage Self-portraits' (Museum Style) An easy-peasy arty activity for ALL age & abilities..

'Self Portraits in Collage Museum Style'

We had a ball at our after school class this evening.  Our session was based around representing ourselves on paper and what moods we wanted to show ourselves in.

Following a bubbly chat about why we make self-portraits and what's good about them (they are cool, you can hang them on the wall, they look pretty, people want to make themselves look great, they are great gifts, etc, etc) we set to work on ourselves!

The children worked really hard over this session which lasted 1hr & 15mins.  Full to the brim of activity and really quite movement based, we worked hard from start to finish.  I made some really simple 'frames' on some brown paper and whited out the centre to give the children a 'space to fill'

this worked really well and encouraged the children to work bigger than they might naturally.

There are some superb pictures here, well done indeed and am really really looking forward to repeating this exercise with my second school of the week.

Well done everyone!  Hints & tips on how easy it is to do this exercise at home underneath the photo's 

Much love, Sam x 

How to do this at home:

This is an utterly fantastic activity to do en famille on a rainy afternoon.   

You will need:

• Magazines, newspapers, coloured papers, etc.
• Glue.  (a glue-stick is fab)
• Large sheet of paper for the frame.  
• Scissors.

Hints & Tips:

• Don't be tempted to work to small!!  Give yourself/your child a big frame space to work in.  This promotes creativity.
• I used some brown packing paper as I have a massive roll for sending out, which I taped around the edges on the back to make it more durable - we definately don't want any rips!

'Crafting BEAUTIFUL BIRDS' from Clay, with lashings of jewels & sequins and lovingly finished off with smothers of PVA...VERY excited about this one!

This activity proved to be an absolute winner!  

The children LOVE working with clay.  I have just had my third lot delivered - have gone from 2kg, to 5kg to now 12.5kg as its so in demand!

This activity is called 'Crafting BEAUTIFUL BIRDS'.

You will need:

Airdrying clay

Beads/sequins/Sparklies

Feathers

Googly eyes.

PVA Glue

1.
Take a palmful of clay and begin to mould into a bird shape.  It doesn't have to be brilliant but we googled some bird shapes and worked from those.

2.
Applique is the way here.  Enjoy every moment of applying all your sparkles.  Glitter might work really well here too.

 3.
Once your bird is looking lovely it's off to the airing cupboard with it.    24hrs in the warmth is all thats needed.  If you don't have a warm space pop it on the radiator and leave well alone for a day or two.

4.
When your bird is dry, you need to cake it with PVA glue.   The glue dries clear so don't worry about layering it on.  Once again, leave to dry overnight.

5.
When your bird is dry, she is ready to enjoy.

Much love, Sam x

Let's make...'Dreamy Dream Catchers' Perfect for a rainy afternoon in with the babes..

'DREAMY DREAM CATCHERS'

Perfecto for rainy afternoons indoors, another gem from the wonderful Marion Sweet...now retired childminder after some 20 years and all round general superstar in all things make & do-ey!  I adore her. 

Righto:

Gather all the materials that you can muster, Marion have tried to use all things that we might have around the house.

You will need:

A paper plate with the centre cut out

Colour felt tips

Tissue papers and shapes

2 circles of sticky back plastic which is slightly bigger than the cut out shape in the paper plate

Thread

Beads, etc

Blu tack

Pencil

1.

Decorate the back of the plate

2.
Place one of the sticky back plastics on the circle cut out.

3.
Put the shapes and tissues onto the sticky back and then place the other circle of sticky back in place.

& turn it over...et voila!  Looking gorgeous.

4. 

Take some blu tack and place at the BOTTOM of your plate.  With the blu tack in place, take a pencil and make 3 holes through the blu tac and the plate (this adds weight).

5.

Take your thread and place 3 lengths into the holes and make them secure.  Hang anything you wish onto the threads, beads, feathers, etc.

6.

Repeat again to make a hole at the top of the plate so you can hang your dream catcher and tada...we are there with a BEAUTIFUL Makey-doey!  Well done you!

Much love

Samantha Barnes, but much more Marion Sweet..(well done again Marion!)

Quick...am on the run but l@@k it's the Easter Art Workshop flyer!! Yay x

Utterly lovely hearty-bunting... a make-along with me (er Marion!)

Its deep dark January now.  

As we speak my two babes are screaming in joy at being allowed to play a round of 'Jump on the Sofa as hard as you can' in the sitting room...  deep joy (don't get involved, don't get involved, don't get involved Mum!)

Now then, I don't know about you but I believe it's really important to give children the space (occasionally) to get bored.  Poor old ds has been home ALL week with a weird viruses-temperaturey thing that sweeping through our village...9 children off in his class since Tuesday.  Not to have a ripe old moan or anything but coupled with being snowed in ALL of last week and the week before that it being half-term - let them have bored...I'm all out of ideas!

Queue Marion, my gorgeous childminder and fellow artist, she is a plethora of all things creative and saved the day.  I had some plastic and she did the rest.  Here's what she did:

Hearty Bunting with Ribbons

List of items you need:

Sticky back plastic, a sheet of.  (Book covering is good)

A heart shape to cut around, hand-sized is good.

Tissue paper shapes

Scissors

A hole- puncher

Ribbons

1.

Cut the sticky back plastic to the same height of the heart shape.

Place the shiney side of the plastic on to the table then peel the backing off.  Place the colours tissues shapes on to the sticky back (not too close together, lots of spaces)

Fold your plastic over on itself, securing the tissues and sticking the plastic back onto itself.  Place your cut-out heart shape underneath and cut around it.   

Then cut each heart shape out leaving you with this..

At the top of the heart place the hole-puncher and push down to make the holes that the ribbon will go through...your'e doing great!

After you made all the hearts (do about 6) trread the ribbon through the holes and create the banner. 

Beautiful!  Well done everyone, Marion especially for saving the day!  Beautiful bunting.  Hope you like the cloudy shed too!  Much love, Sam x  

Help...snowed in with the children?! Make newspaper bowls & decorate away!

Thank you whole heartedly to the wonderful team at Access Art for this absolute Gem from Lisa Smith.

For my Artypops after-school art class last week I will still at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the babes considering we had done a drawing session the week before.   It was really good giggle as I got the children to draw in pencil masking taped to the end of 50cm garden canes, they loved it naturally.

This week I wanted to do something makey-decoratey as they LOVE to take things home and I had had some new beady-jewellery things delivered this week too.

What to decorate?  Well, thanks to the wonderful treasure chest full of art ideas and inspiration for both children and adults I came across these.

Newspaper Bowls.

Newspaper, large sheets are good.

Garden bamboo cane or a 

Lashings of glue

Tissue paper

Gems & Beads

1.

Take something to roll the newspaper around, I used a garden bamboo cane.  Having laid the newspaper flat out, roll up with the bamboo cane inside LOOSELY as you need it to slip out at the end.  Lay the newspaper out flatly and squish down.  You may need to double it over so its proper thick, I had to.  Tape with making tape in the middle and at the ends.  peasey.

2.  

Next..roll up the newspaper so its tight as can be..am going to borrow a picture or two here from Access Art..

Tightly coil up the newspaper until it looks a bit like this:

3.  When you have your flat coil of newspaper, begin to push the bottom of the bowl out.  Do so gently and feel free to reinforce with masking tape, I did.

4.

& then...decorate away!  Lashings of glue and paste over with tissue paper.  Add more glue to 'varnish' it all and then stick on a piece of paper and pop on the radiator or in the airing cupboard overnight.  Perfecto!

Coming this February half-term for the babes...

All hail the 'Christmas print-out' (perfect emergency activity for the Christmas hangover)

Good morning the world

Ah yes, the morning after Christmas party number one...ouchy heads all round.

No pinchy craniums for the babes of course and off they are with their lovely (loud) voices and excitable babbles about our installing a Christmas tree today... time for emergency bacon and eggs me thinks.

Back in 20.

Much better, yum and groan.

My post today is in celebration of the Christmas print out.  Very very simply...we're talking about these at cbeebies among others (you'll find some more listed below at the end of this post.)  The only downside to these is that your printer has to have both ink and paper in... if you're luck is in and you have both, print away dear hearts and occupy little minds for as long as it lasts.

Below is a quick screen-shot of some of the many gazillions on offer. Invest in good felt-tips and have them on stand by at all times.  I bought dd some Crayola tips nearly a month ago now and they have survived a bashing twice to three times a day and are still going strong.

I wanted to find some really gorgeous ones but alas I can't find any that really stand out from the crowd...hmmm, perhaps next year I will make some of my own as I love to produce line-drawings.  Here are two that are consistently in my best-sellers list 'Polar Bear' & 'Goosey Goo'.  Hope you enjoy!

Other places to find Christmas printables.  (will be adding to the list)

http://www.mumsnet.com/christmas/printables

Easy-Peasy Hangy-uppy Christmas Signs..P.E.A.S.E.Y (promise)

Hangy-uppy Happy Christmas Signs..

You will need:  

Ribbon

Labels (any size is good)

Paint/stickers/etc etc

Beads of some sort (if you have them)

Lovely to hang over any pictures you have in the house, to give away to Granny or perhaps to hang on the tree..

1.
Gather your bits and bobs.

2.
Paint up your labels.  I have used acrylic paint here making it really bright and strong, but it's great to use poster paints too.  I have only painted them on one side.  Once painted, leave until bone dry.  When so, paint on your letters in any colour you wish...white on red is great too.  I left them to dry then redid the letters with a second coat to make the colours stand out big and strong.

3.
Once dry, remove all the strings that came with the labels and begin to thread the labels onto the ribbon on each side of every label, I have used a bead to make more of the decoration (this also fleshes out the activity for the youngsters to enjoy).

4.
Tricky bit I know.. but to hold the labels in place, I have attached a tiny bit of selotape/masking tape to the back of the label to making it secure - bit fiddly but very doable.

So there you have it...if you wanted to you could keep adding and make ceiling decorations...using the bigger labels...ooooh, I may have to have a go at that one!

Much love, Sam x