the day I traded in my Sherman for a ballerina

It was one of those weeks where the truth is stranger than fiction, though I could easily substitute month for week.

Least of concerns was that my beloved ThinkPad, Brick-olage, was diagnosed as being little more than an over-glorified portable DVD player. So in exchange for prepping my brother's room to be painted, my parents bought me a replacement laptop so I could finish my graduate school experience. It's an HP, it has a wide screen, and on-board webcam, microphone and SD card reader [really glad i didn't run out and but one of those]. Brick-olage had none of these things going for it except that it was the Sherman tank of laptops. The only thing tougher is a Tough book, the kind cops haul around. The ones build to withstand bullets. I will miss my tank. 


And I have an after market mouse now, too.


One of the things I was working on finishing while I was up here is a tee-shirt example for the kids I will be working with this summer. Last year I semi-copied an elephant reading a book at the library as my design. Working more wet-on-wet this time, especially with the background, I was trying to get a feel for the project if I only gave the students two colours. (dear spell checker, have you decided to go Brit?)

I had started this project last year, and misplaced my paint in the move, and then misplaced the project. It's really very simple.

batik with white glue

Time considerations: 24 hours dry time each for glue and paint

You need:
a. fabric (a child's 12/14 teeshirt)
b. acrylic (permanent) paint, or tempra (washable) with fixative medium
c. paint brushes
d. trash bag, or other large-ish, water impermeable thing to lay under fabric or between shirt layers.
e. White water soluble glue

optional: spray bottle with clean water.

The first part of the process is to lay out the design with white glue. Easier said than done, given a certain lack of control with the glue coming out of a squirt bottle. A stencil might work, if the glue was pounced on with stencil sponges/brushes. Since this project had been misplaced for about a year, I didn't have to worry about the glue drying.

To get the colours to blend, I first sprayed down the tee-shirt with water from a spray bottle, and began layering coat after coat of mixed cobalt blue and teal acrylic. I was worried that the glue would dissolve and I would loose my white glue lines lines, but that wasn't a problem. Working outdoors under direct sunlight, my paint dried relatively quickly, so I was able to quickly layer different colour concentrations on with less bleeding. Once I got the colour looking the way I wanted it to, I let it sit in direct summer sunlight for about three hours.In a classroom setting, the pieces would likely have to dry overnight, depending on humidity and indoor temperature. If using tempra paint plus a fixative medium, the project has to go for a spin in the dryer before being washed. 

Last summer, what this looked like with K-6th graders was a myriad of white plastic bag stuffed tee-shirts laid on the school's cement walk, drying in the sun, then collected at the very end of the day by the art staffers. It should be obvious why the paint needs to dry before going into the dryer, unless you don't mind cleaning the dryer drum. The tees were dry enough that we were able to peel out the bags, stack the shirts in a laundry basket and haul them home for a spin in the dryer [three people had access to their own washer/dryers, so we split up the shirts for washing amongst us]. Since we wanted the kids to wear them before the summer program was over, we included a complete wash cycle after the spin in the dryer, to wash off the white glue. 

What I learned about white glue.. after the wash cycle, I pulled my tee shirt out of our top loader and was astonished to discover a gummy white substance on the shirt... the white glue I had applied last year. Apparently, leaving white glue to dry for an entire year increases the difficulty of washability. I soaked the tee-shirt overnight in a mild detergent solution, then laid it over the upturned side of a dish pan in the kitchen sink, turned the hot water on used the sprayer attachment to help remove the last of the glue.

tie it up tuesday

why tie-it-up-Tuesday? Because tomorrow is Wrap-it-up-Wednesday - last day of PPS Summer Dreamers!

 Today was our gallery crawl. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but somehow we missed the whole walk-around and look at everyone's stuff memo. But we did. A few of my student's parents came, which was nice.

Here are a few of the ceramic things which came in at the VERY last minute:

Shaving cream + glaze!

I'd really like a lesson on how to arrange pictures on this blog in a more compact fashion that doesn't leave a few football field's worth of space between them, so if  you have any pointers on that, I'd love to hear it.

make-it-monday glue batik tee-shirt tutorial

In the continuing list of art project to do with elementary students (or anyone crafty who would get a kick out of it), I bring...
Elmer's glue Batik!
Hooray!


WARNING!! *this project requires two separate drying times, plus the additional use of either a dryer for a full cycle or an iron if using Tempra paint and the fabric painting medium*


Materials
a white tee shirt in the painter's size


acrylic paint in cyan, magenta and yellow (these colors mix beautifully for secondary shades of greens and purples)
OR
tempra paint in cyan, magenta and yellow AND
fabric painting medium



thin foamcore or an empty cereal box
pencil
black permanent marker



optional equipment... or use all of them for some really neat effects
paint brushes
spray bottle
sponge
plastic grocery bag

medium-and-tempra premixed in squirt bottles (i didn't use this much, not even 1/4 of the bottle)

Method
if you're not quite pressed for time...have the participant draw out a design on a piece of paper board or thin foam core - the paper board could be the back of a cereal box, what ever is handy. Remember, simple and big is usually best - intricate designs will be harder to accomplish with white Elmer's glue and will take more time.


Once the final design is settled on, go over the pencil lines with the black permanent marker. 
Slide the paperboard design side up in between the front and back of shirt, making sure the tag is facing you if the front is what you want to paint. Center as needed.

tee shirt design (far too complicated) with the dried, applied glue and bag-stuffed tee shirt

Have the participant go over the design - visible through the front of the tee shirt - with the white glue. It will soak in and spread, so try to drag blobs of glue along with the tip of the glue applicator to achieve lines and filled in places. 


if you are pressed for time... go nuts a la Jackson Pollak with the white glue. Or try for an Australian aboriginal design of concentric dot circles and swirls. Or just be creative.


set the tee shirt aside with the paperboard still inserted inside for the glue to dry. This takes a few hours. After the glue is dry, haul out the paint! This is where the plastic grocery bag comes in - if your paper inside the shirt isn't large enough to fill the inside, a plastic bag will fill enough of the shirt cavity that the paint design will not bleed through the back of the shirt. Acrylic won't need to be mixed, but the Termpra will need to be mixed with the medium as per the directions on the bottle.

Paint can be applied with brushed, sprayed on with a spray bottle, pounced on with sponges, flicked on with a toothbrush, what ever.While painting, make sure any area that was decorated with glue is covered over and/or around with paint - otherwise the design won't be visible. Experiment with wetting the fabric slightly with clean water and painting with a dampened paint brush (with paint on it, of course) this will make the colors blend together. A dry tee shirt and a 'dry' (a not dampened brush with paint on it) will create a different look. 

When finished painting,  set the shirt aside with the bag/paperboard still inside. This takes a few hours, and is especially dependent on how much paint made it onto the shirt, how thick the paint is, etc.

Once the shirt is completely dry, remove the plastic bag/paper board. For acrylic paint, run through the wash - this will dissolve the white glue and cause the design to appear white.

For the tempra/medium method, follow the directions to set the paint. Our medium required that we either iron the shirt (putting a piece of clean, blank paper between the shirt and the iron)for five to ten minutes on high heat, or running the shirt through the dryer for a minimum of 40 minutes on high heat. Only after these steps are the shirts safe to toss in the wash to dissolve the glue.

...teh kitteh comes in for a closer look

I completed the glue and paint aspect of the project in the space of nine hours - this was setting up, applying the glue, the time I spent in a meeting after work and driving home with glued shirt in the back seat of my car, cooking dinner, walking around the block, playing with the cat, etc., eating dinner and then a chunk of epic paint time in the evening. In short, I could have been more efficient, and gotten it done a leeeettle faster. I did let the paint dry over night, then threw my tee in the dryer while I made breakfast and coffee and checked my email and showered, etc., the following morning. I was rushed, so I soaked it in a bucket of warm water and dish soap, and scrubbed at the glue spots with my fingers to encourage them to peel off faster.

fun with still life

And we're back. Sort of. At a loss one morning as what to do with the chilluns, I remembered still lifes, and how easy they are to set up with anything. And I needed some eggplant anyway. 

                   our gallery of still lifes...

Some of them really got the concept of drawing what they saw, some of them had to be led to water, others... others had major melt downs. But then, that happens everyday. Carry on.

Make-it Monday

Another week of Summer Dreamers drew to a close earlier today - I'm quietly cheering, having stood on concrete block floor four hours straight. Attendance was down today, way down, and several of my more... delightful students were among the missing, making class run a whole lot smoother. We were finishing up our papier machet project, which was going to be a pinata for the chilluns to take home, fill with candy and club to death. Then self said "Be realistic - none of these parents are going to do that for their child." I don't think I'd be terribly excited as a mom if my kid showed up with a pinata from school. Of course, I would be the mom who'd make it with my kids, but that's another story.

So we're making hot air balloons instead! It took me 20 minutes to explain this concept - I'd say:
"We're making hot air balloons with a plastic bottle bottom for the basket, and the papier machet form as the balloon!"
"What's a hot air balloon?"
"It's a vehicle for transportation - a bag made of silk or nylon with a heat source to keep the air in the balloon warm - because hot air rises - with a basket attached for people to ride in."
"How's it work?"
"The heat source makes the air hot in the bag and it rises - no hot air, no rise-y. We're just going to make a model of a hot air balloon - these won't actually work."
"Miss Zara, Miss Zara!"
"Yes?"
"What are we making today?"
*headdesk*

I don't have any pictures from today due to the flour + water + salt = mess all over Miss Zara's hands and clothes and apron. The process is pretty simple though. Blow up a party balloon, start applying strips of newspaper dampened in papier machet solution in an organized manner, making sure the strips overlap each other slightly. More layers = stronger side walls. Allow to dry over night. Decorate in what ever manner you see fit. Since we had problems with children and paint, the coordinator and I decided to get tissue paper and let the kids glue it on the sides instead [yay, modge podge!]. I need to rustle up some pictures of hot air balloons, knowing none of them have likely seen one, especially any that are food related. This is Captain Cook's Clay Kitchen after all.

*These pictures were taken after the event in question

On display at the gallery crawl, we cut off the bottom of
plastic bottles and punched holes in them for the baskets

art and the 1st grade... and other things

My part time job this summer is teaching art to first graders who are in summer school. It's a hook to try to keep them interested in coming day after day. Some of these kids probably aren't getting half of what we talk about, but they seem to be enjoying themselves, and in the long run, I'd rather be a positive art experience than the person that ruined it for them. Today we played with tempra paint and mixed colors together. Some kids had some pretty impressive colors mixed together, some went along kicking and screaming until they folded their papers in half, wailing that they had "made a mistake" and wanted a new paper and I unfolded their page and showed them the mirror images they created... and they were hooked. We painted pictures of bananas, oranges and eggplant - not something you would think of a 1st grader painting, but considering that circles closer to the size of grapes are currently beyond their motor skill level, we went for eggplant, fine examples of aubergine. Now I'm drooling - I had eggplant in garlic sauce for lunch and it was amazing.


I'm listening to Pandora on my iPod right now, and there are bits and pieces of music playing, then silence, then a phrase, then silence. I feel like I'm listening for music. There will be moments of clarity, when I can hear it and I think, you know, this sounds beautiful/moving/etc and I think in that moment that I : get it, can see the bigger picture, etc : and then the [proverbial] music stops and I'm left in the silence, wondering. Waiting. Looking around and thinking why did it go away? Why have I lost it? Is it going to come back? I think to myself, what if I had heard more of the phrase earlier in my life, would I have taken the path I did, made the decisions I did? There are some things I simply couldn't have known were coming, and other things I should have seen coming, and made preparations for.

I'm where I am now. The only thing I can change is the direction I am going, and not think of it as back tracking or correcting mistakes. What about the things I did? Would I have not done them? Visit Europe? Taken that internship? Signed up for Wood Furniture? Taken the job that made me move away from home? Section hiked the Appalachian Trail? No, I'm glad I did these things. But sometimes I can't help thinking I could have been a lot more organized about life. But I was not thinking forward. I was not looking at the road ahead, and the bend coming, but at the rock formation to the left, the clouds sailing above, the pasture, the forest, the things on the side of the road, not necessarily distractions, but things that certainly had me completely captivated.

I'm like the kid that was sent to summer school. That got held back in Kindergarten because I needed time to "get the play out" - mature emotionally. Gain life experience. But I pray to God that when it comes time to retire, I have the ability to do so, because I've ... not wasted time, none of this time was wastecd in trying to find a stable career, but it sure feels like that sometimes.