Cute Valentine Card for Schoolmates

Lately, in our house you will see the craft table covered in pink and red papers, glitter and paints. My girls are getting ready for their Valentine card handouts at school. I really enjoy looking at Pintrest and blogs for original ideas. However, this year, I came up with a chocolate coin in the center of a watercolor heart. I found some chocolate coins in the dollar isle of Target and had my darling girl paint watercolor hearts and voila... a simple and cute Valentine's card.

I just love the way watercolor hearts turn out. Are your kids in the middle of Valentine cards too? 

Summer Art Camp

As summer comes to a close (so sad) I thought I would share with you a fun summer tradition. For the past few summers one of my good friends and I put on a Art Camp for our kids, their friends and neighbors. We have loads of messy fun making different crafts, painting and baking. This year we had an older girls group (9-12) and a younger children's age group (5-7). Here's some of the creative things these kids did this summer:

 Painting on canvas is such a treat for these kids. We talked to them about sketching first and then they pick a still life they want to do (or not). These make for great works of art on their walls.

The girls also decorated their own tote bags using fabric or painting on them. My daughter Alison uses hers for her music bag now.

                   We made banners for their bedrooms or for their birthday parties using paper and fabric.

                                          It can get a bit messy when creativity is in the works.

          The older girls did some beautiful watercolors and we taught them about sketching and landscapes.

We had a day for the younger children to learn about Pop Art and showed them some of Andy Warhol's works. The children traced some shapes we had for them like a ducky, ice cream cone, crown, sailboat. etc and we used a grid method to break up their paper. Then they used poster paints to fill up the space. 

 Another activity was watercolor where they learned how to do Pointillism. Pointillism is like Impressionism but with tiny dots to create an image (think- George Seurat). The children used q-tips to create a pointillism effect.

Kids love to decorate cupcakes. They got to decorate a cookie monster and Elmo cupcakes. I didn't get many pictures of these because everything was gobbled up to fast.

 Lastly, we did a spaghetti art throwing day to learn about Expressionism. Think Jackson Pollock and splattering paint. Instead of throwing paint, we had the kids throw painted spaghetti at large pieces of paper to create an expressionist look.

 As you can imagine- it was a lot of spaghetti to clean up. However, they had fun running through the sprinkler at the end to get all cleaned up and I hosed my house down.

We also had lots of little side projects like these where we taught them to blend colors and using the color wheel. Summer is such a fun time to do art projects with kids. We had a great time and I'm sure we'll do more next year. What about you? Any fun art projects you made?

*All images are my own. 

The Folding Screen and Silhouette

First of all, welcome to my blog if you are coming over from I Heart Organizing. Glad you stopped here! I'm working on making different projects in our home and this is where I'm documenting it all. Keep coming back to see tutorials, tips and things I'm working on.

Children's bedrooms are fun to decorate especially when you have your children's input about what they want their room to look like. Our daughter Lauren helped me decide on the color and she helped paint her room. When I brought home the folding screen, she helped pick out the fabric too! This girl loves color and is very artistic so we want her room to reflect her beautiful personality. I'm showing only some of the room since this is still a work in progress (some other furniture in here needs to be painted).

Two great projects which have enhanced this room are the folding screen and silhouette picture. I talked about the folding screens in this post.

 You can see we have a gallery started on the wall with some of her artwork up there (more to come). 

Making a silhouette portrait has been on my crafting bucket list for awhile so it's nice to have something done for the new year. Here's how I did it:

                                   1. Take a profile shot with as much light as possible behind the person.

2. I went to the edit section of Picassa and made the picture into a pencil sketch. You really just want the lines of the profile to stick out the most. With editing you could even lighten most of the dark behind the person. In Picassa, you can crop the image and make it a bit larger. 

3. Carefully cut it out and paint or use a sharpie. I painted mine black, but I love silhouettes in different colors too. I did one in pink for my daughter's tea party . Also, using card stock paper is best since it can handle the paint better than printing paper. 

Now for the screen: Here's the before shot when I brought it home from the thrift store. It was cute, but not the color we wanted and the hinge needed to be fixed. I took out the backing and swapped out the pink fabric for the citrus green stripe. When reupholstering, just hold the fabric tight as you are stapling so that you don't get creases. My husband fixed the hinge for us and now all three pieces are together again.

This room is starting to take shape! I really like how these projects turned out. Making a silhouette portrait is a great way to customize your home and bring in some character (it's also a cheap thrill since it won't cost hardly anything). Also, putting the screen behind the bed brought in a great layering effect. Have you ever put a folding screen behind a bed? Or done a silhouette portrait? Do tell. 

Paint- Watery by Shermin Williams
Screen- Thrift Store (I think it was a Pottery Barn Kids)
Fabric on screen- Fabric.com
Owl pillow- T.J Maxx
Garland- Rifle Paper Co.
Quilt- treasured gift from Grandma
Floor lamp- vintage, yard sale find, spray painted white
Bed- Thrift Store find, painted

I'm liking up this post to:
Not Just a House Wife
The Shabby Nest
Thirty Handmade Days

Snow Days

We got snow! Our girls were home from school Monday and today. They've been having fun making snow forts and sledding. 

 For a little Christmas craft they made their own wreaths out of cereal boxes and cut up strips of paper. They turned out so cute!

I worked on my own wreath. I will show a close up later since I'm going to add a bit more to it, but it was really fun to make. 

 Christmas baking has begun. I love to make chocolate bark since it freezes well and you can hand it out when you're ready to give goodies.

We hung up our lights on our porch and wreaths on the front windows. Things are starting to look Christmas-y around here.

Gearing up for Thanksgiving

Thank goodness Thanksgiving comes before Christmas. Don't get me wrong I love Christmas, but there is something really beautiful about dedicating an entire day to give thanks for all our blessings and gifts we have before we start (technically) making our 'wish lists'. I am still enjoying all those pretty pumpkins and remaining mums. Its getting colder in Maryland and many of the leaves have fallen. While I was out for a run one day I came across some trees by the path which had large yellow leaves. The sunlight that filtered through the trees made these look like golden yellow drops. I picked up some leaves and ran home (great workout). Don't you think Nature is the best designer? Using leaves can be a great decorating material (aka-cheap thrills). I decided to press the leaves in large books for a couple of weeks.

Pressing leaves or flowers is a piece of cake.
1. Get a heavy, large book.
2. Use parchment paper between the pages and the leaves. This not only protects your book but also helps absorb some of the water that comes out while you are basically dehydrating your leaves.
3. Let them sit in the books for a couple of weeks until flat and dry.

The leaves can then be painted with some glue and glitter. I chose Martha Stewart glitter. This stuff is a great to have on hand for all those Christmas and Holiday crafts. 

Then, hang them up with string or ribbon. 

We decided it would be nice to start writing things we're grateful for on our slim chalkboard wall in our kitchen. The kids usually use this wall to draw on and practice writing their letters.

Writing out my blessings always helps me keep things in perspective. What does your family do to gear up for Thanksgiving?