Happy April Vacation!

My plan was to post a non-school-related artsy-craftsy do-it-yourself-y creation a day, Monday-Friday, over April vacation to celebrate our freedom.  You know the moment you realize you've wasted your vacation watching TV and sleeping?

It's Thursday.  But I have one!  One little craft I did over vacation.  Maybe by Sunday, I'll have a decent number of posts and won't be so ashamed.  For now, you'll have to enjoy my simple painting.

I printed out a picture of Massachusetts and traced it in pencil on my Walmart canvas.  I picked yellow acrylic paint for a background color because I like it and it was handy.  I painted the yellow around the state, using the tiniest brush to get it all the details around the harbor and islands.

I let the paint dry, which didn't take too long, and erased all the pencil.  Then came the blue for the state! Again, I selected the color because it was handy, and I like blue, and it goes with yellow.  My old elementary school colors were blue and gold.  Maybe those colors are deeply embedded in my psyche.

Again, I used my tiniest paint brush for the details.  While that dried, I found some crinkly deep pink paper from a stationery collection and cut out a small heart.  You could also take some construction paper and crumple it with your hands.  I took my Tacky Glue and glued it over my beloved Boston.

I've seen paintings of states done with the heart cut out or painted on, but I wanted to be creative and 3D.  I'm also really into appliques right now.

I've had a few glasses of wine.

Final product again, this time hanging on my dark blue wall:

Artistic style:

That's my lamp.

Bye!

Pencil Trade-Out

Remember the crayon vases I made?  I had to buy a large pack of mason jars instead of just a few.  Silly Walmart.  I have found many uses for mason jars, including my fancy, wonderful, slightly impractical pencil trade-out system.

Like the new camera?  It has a lot of settings and I like to play with them.

I took a mason jar, found a cute pencil-themed font from dafont.com, typed up the labels, glued them to pencil-colored card stock, and packing-taped them to the jars.  Then, I screwed on the jar rims, throwing the top disc things under my bed next to that green styrofoam crap and some old boxes.

You don't have to do that part.

Next, instruct your children to keep pencils IN THEIR PENCIL CASES and only to trade out a dull for a sharp if they have NO SHARP PENCILS IN THEIR PENCIL CASES.  Then, make sure the dull ones go in the dull jar, and the sharp ones in the sharp jar.  We have a Pencil Sharpener job during Job Time, and that is the ONLY time students can sharpen pencils during school.

My pencil sharpener was $50 and I love it like I love my own unborn children.  It sharpens pencils in seconds!  I highly recommend that investment.

I caution you: my sweet little chicadees ADORE trading out their pencils.  They all demand a perfectly sharp one, and are also too lazy to get them from their blue bins at the back of the classroom (we don't have desks, just tables).  I have had to crack down, I tell you!  But now we've got the hang of it.  In March!  Also, they're glass jars, so maybe they're not the most brilliant container.  Luckily, my cherubs are delicate and cautious.

...

I think the blurry part in the back is called "bokeh" and you adjust the aperture to make it focused in the front and get that lovely "bokeh".  I might be talking out of my butt.

Here's how they know when to throw out a pencil that is too small:

This is taped to the table in front of the pencil jars.  The kids hold the pencils up to the one drawn on here and throw it away if it's too small.  This helps avoid their love of sharpening their pencils until there's barely anything left and then trying to write with it!

Crayon Vase

It's time for a craft!  I have yet to come up with something that is 100% my own idea, but I think I did a pretty good job taking this idea I found:

And crafternooning it into this:

So throw the Dance Moms marathon on your tv, get your materials, and have a great crafternoon!

All you need is:

-A jam-sized Mason Jar

-A brand new pack of crisp, clean crayons 

-Fake flowers- I made paper flowers from a pack I got at Paper Source

-A glue gun

-Ribbon

-That styrofoamy green crap you use in fake flower arranging... I'm sure they call it something glamorous like "Floral Styling Foam" but you can get it in the craft section at Walmart.  The little pieces of this stuff get all over your hands and clothes and they feel super grainy and gross and stick to you like glitter but if you can get over that, you should totally use it!

Here is a quick step-by-step via crappy iPhone pictures:

Assemble your materials and get your glue gun niiiiiiice and hot.  You can discard the top of the jar unless you have some sort of affinity toward Mason Jar tops.  I spent 3 minutes googling whether you say "affinity toward", "affinity towards", or "affinity for".  I gave up and just used "toward".  Boy, what I do for a laugh!

Be sure you have a safe working surface!

I'm sure there are proper techniques, but I just put a dot of glue on the jar at the top and bottom and pressed crayons on!  You definitely have to be careful and work slowly, but it's pretty straightforward.  I put the green stuff in the jar first since it's pretty firm and I didn't want to mess up the crayons after they were glued on.  

Jam the flowers in so that they look full and happy and bright. Tie a ribbon around it and secure it tightly.  I just did a tight double knot and snipped off the ends.  Then place it anywhere in your classroom to make it a brighter place!  I put it on my desk near the ugly computer table I covered up with my leftover lace curtains :)

You can't buy Mason Jars without getting the whole darn pack, and you'll probably have leftover crayons and flowers and that disgusting green stuff, so why not make another one?

Orrrrrrr... just put the crayons in the jar and screw on the rim- not the lid.

If you're like me, you have both rainbow AND yellow polka-dotted ribbon laying around AND all sorts of different packs of paper flowers.  Then you can rrrrreally get wild.