Drawing and Painting a Goldfish

This was a fun project that we did by following a tutorial on Pinterest. As you can see, we all ended up with something a little bit different and my son took the idea and expanded to further to make an Angelfish instead. You can try drawing Goldfish like we did with this tutorial on The Drawbot.

Where Did We Go Wednesday? Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL

Norton Museum of Art

These are some of my favorites from the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach Florida. They offer a evening hours on Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m. called Art After Dark. This was one of our evening excursions when my husband and I took our 15 year anniversary trip to Florida.

It is a free museum and there is a variety of different exhibitions and collections there. I would plan to spend about an hour here.

Teacher Appreciation Gift #5: Thanks for Being a TEA-rrific Teacher DIY Mug

The mug itself is a project I found on Pinterest. This website, The Sweetest Occasion, has some pretty good instructions on how to make a mug like this one. I have read a lot of posts though where people have failed horrible at making this project. I found that the key is to use a lot of fingernail polish right away. This was a good project to use up colors that we had not used in a while that were about half full but we still ended up using about 6 or 7 bottles that were half full to do just one mug.

The other one my daughter made for herself in blues and was hoping it would look like waves in the ocean. She is a swimmer and really like the idea of having a mug like that.

The mug she made for her art teacher she stuffed it with a variety of Teas and we attached a card that said "Thanks for being a TEA-rrific Teacher!"

Her art teacher appreciated the time and creativity she put into this.

Star Paper Plate Wreath

With a little bit of preparation, you can easily make this cute weath with your child in a short time.

I bought the cheap paper plates that have a circle indentation around the center. Start a hole for them so they can get their scissors inside and have them cut out that inner circle. While they were doing that I cut out Stars. Cut out squares in the size you want so that you can easily cut out stars using a template. I made a template and then cut out 3-4 stars at a time. Then let them glue them into place. I had some excess ribbon and just tied it in a bowl and let them glue that into place as well.

Super quick. Super easy. Super cute.

Teacher Appreciation Gift Idea #2: "Thanks for Helping Me Grow" Hand Print Craft

This is one that my kindergarten son made for his teacher. It's a perfect for the younger child like preschool and kindergarten.

It's a simple hand print craft and he loved painting it for his teacher. They only stay little for so long, so let them finger paint and get those hand prints while they are still little.

Thanks for Helping Me Grow!

Art Birthday Party Ideas

My daughter's 9th birthday party was an Art Theme. We did it at our home and here are some of the ideas I had:

• Palette Cupcakes (those are Spree candies for the paint)
• Easels made from popsicle sticks (hot glues together) with paint chips as their name plates
• Gave each child a colorful apron to use and take home
• Tied her balloons to a watercolor palette for her to keep
• Set up art stations for each of the kids to paint at (one project was an underwater sealife painting)
• Decorated storage containers (metal cans I had sprayed painted in advance) with duct tape, milk lids, chalk paint and twine
• Gave each child a set of paint brushes and a foam brush to use for their painting project and take home 

Wordless Wednesday: Chihuly Garden and Glass

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Wordless Wednesday: Olympic Sculpture Park

Olympic Sculpture Park

Easy Strawberry Art Project and AR Book Freckleface Strawberry

I did this during this past school year with my daughter's class. Our high school was putting on the musical of Freckleface Strawberry and I wanted the kids to know the story and get excited about seeing the play. Her classmates love when I comes in and read to them (even if the book is below their grade level) and I am pretty sure they love it even more then I bring in a project for them.

To make these strawberries I just created a couple of templates so that those who wanted to trace the shape construction paper could. I cut up green construction paper in to squares (6 per strawberry) and rectangles (1 for the stem) in advance. To make the seeds, I just gave them q-tips and a little black tempera paint.

It was a relatively quick project, but it was fun for them and I think make the book and musical even more meaningful for them.

Painted Landscaping Bricks at the Cabin

Here is a fun and thrifty idea. We did this as an extended part of my daughter's Art Birthday celebration and did these with family at our cabin. The ones pictured here are all of ours and are at our cabin. We each did 2 of them and helped brighten up the entry path to our cabin front door. We didn't really have a clear path before so we tore our a bush that had overgrown it's spot there (I replanted it somewhere else with more room.)

So, you can see we have an eclectic grouping of painted bricks (they are pretty inexpensive) that we painted with acrylic paint. My husband painted a boat and lake scene and then his name with a fishing bobber. I painted my name and an American flag. My daughter painted her name and then the "Cabin" brick (she painted everything but the word, which I did). My son painted the truck and let me paint his name one which I did in Minnesota Vikings colors and style of letters. I think they turned out great!

FREE Admission at Walker Art Center on Thursday Nights

Thursdays from 5-9pm is FREE admission as part of Target Free Nights at the Walker Art Center. If Thursday nights don't work, they also have FREE admission on the first Saturday of every month. Also, the Sculpture Garden and Conservatory are always FREE!

DIY Pop Art Water Spot Coasters, plus a GIVEAWAY for Tootsie Roll K-Cups #ad

This project is the perfect way to re-use your used K-Cups and make something useful out of them. I used K-Cups from Tootsie Roll Hot Cocoa K-Cups that have not internal packaging, so they are easy to remove the foil and rinse out to use for this project.

I thought it would be fun to come up with some crafts to re-use K-Cups with. We don't use a lot of K-Cups, but I do like having them for when my husband is traveling for work and I need a quick cup of coffee before taking the kids to school and volunteering. I also like that my daughter can easily make herself a cup of hot cocoa. Anyways - time to tell you how I made this project. 

4 Tile Coasters Cost Me $1.50 to Make!!!!!

When I say $1.50, that is my out of pocket cost from purchasing 4 plain white tiles from Lowe's and 1 piece of felt and 1 tube of point (I was out of red) from Wal-Mart to make these. I had all the other paint colors I wanted to use, so I only needed to purchase the one. I also had the brushes and Fabric-Tac that I used to glue the felt pieces on the back, as well as a can of Hi-Glass clear lacquer (going need to purchase that soon for an upcoming project.)

I need to paint 2-3 coats of each color on the tiles, letting it dry in between coats. Then dipped a K-Cup in paint and pressed it on tile allowing it to smudge and drip (if it did) to have it look like actual water rings spots.

After acrylic paint is completely dry, spray with the clear spray paint. I did 2 coats, allowing it to dry between coats.

When that paint is cured (allow 24 hours), glue down pieces of felt that you have cut just smaller than the tiles to the back with some Fabric-Tac.

I made these for our own use, but I thinking of having the kids each make one for their teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week in May and giving it to them with a box of tea. I was perhaps thinking of making a week's worth of gifts all along the "hot beverage theme". Stay tuned and see what else I come up with.

I love a good tasty review! Check out all those flavors included! All 3 flavors of Charleston Chew are also included!

My Thoughts:

My family and I have tried all of the flavors included in the Tootsie Roll Hot Cocoa for K-Cup Brewers: Tootsie Roll, Sugar Babies, Junior Mint and Charleston Chew (in the flavors of Vanilla, Strawberry, and Chocolate) and they taste awesome, just how you expect each of the candy flavors to taste in a hot cocoa version. My favorite is Sugar Babies, but that is because it is my favorite of the candies listed. I did have an issue of some of the cocoa mix being left in the Charleston Chew flavors, but it still made a full cup and just tasted slightly watered down. All the other flavors made full cups and pretty much emptied the K-cup. I would not hesitate to get this variety pack again for my family. I do love that it is a variety pack because we have so many choices and we can pick one that suits our mood that day. I did want to add that I compared the nutritional info on this with a name brand hot cocoa packet (from a box of 10 packets) and the amount of sugar in the K-Cup was less than half, plus it has 40 less calories and half the amount of fat. I thought these tasted better than the packets I have.

If you aren't making your own homemade hot cocoa and are using packets, this produces just as much waste. Although, you can re-use the K-Cup for this craft project and more that I will share with you later. There is no internal pieces to this k-cup like there is on coffee and tea ones, so this has less waste than those.

Product Description from Two Rivers Coffee

As America’s favorite chewy chocolate candy, the Tootsie Roll has remained unchanged since it was first introduced in New York City in 1896. Now, you can enjoy the perfectly balanced cocoa taste, lined with subtle fruit-flavored undertones, as a steaming hot cups of delicious hot cocoa.

The Ultimate Single Serve Hot Cocoa Experience.

This cocoa pack is NOT COMPATIBLE with Keurig 2.0 machines.

ONE LUCKY READER WILL WIN THEIR OWN

40 PACK OF ASSORTED TOOTSIE ROLL HOT COCOA K-CUPS

ENTER RAFFLECOPTER BELOW

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was sent the above product for the purpose of review. All thoughts, opinions and photographs belong to this blog. No monetary compensation was recieved.

Wordless Wednesday: Art Tour at DFW

If you ever find yourself at the Dallas Forth Worth International Airport and you have at least an hour to spare, check out Concourse D Art Tour. A friend and I were traveling through, catching a connecting flight but we were bumped from our original flight to a later one and had plenty of time to go sit down for lunch and take this tour. We didn't know about it until we got there and saw the brochure. So, here are just a few of the things we saw.

Pottery Time: Paint Brush Holder

Thought it was time to start sharing some pottery creations again. This is one I created a little while ago, but I finally gave it to a friend for her birthday (along with new brushes, paint, a stretched canvas and palette.) I also made one for myself, but I need to take a picture of it. I am thinking of suggesting to my daughter that she make one of these for herself and her after school Art Club teacher (yes, we are working on Christmas presents already - pottery takes time!)

To make this, I did it by hand building the clay in to a triangle shape then cutting out the curved area and molding them with my hands to make them smooth. I then carved in leaves and hand painted glaze over the entire piece in blue and each individual leaf.

Try It Tuesday: Coffee Filter Butterflies

This is a super fun and easy project for kids and uses dot markers.

Supplies Needed Per Butterfly:

• 2 round coffee filters
• dot markers
• 1 pipe cleaner
• spray bottle of water

Directions:

• Flatten out the coffee filters
• Make dot marks all over the filters 
• Spray down with water
• Allow to Dry
• Pinch each of the filter to the center so that one creates the top wings and the other creates the bottom wings
• Fold a pipe cleaner in half and twist the bottom (folded part) inch together
• Place the pinched coffee filters in between the pipe cleaners on top of the twisted part
• Twist over the top of the wings to secure in to place
• Curl pipe cleaner ends to make antennae

You can also try using washable makers like we did in this butterfly craft.

Thrifty Thursday: Recycled Frog Puppet

Sometimes you can create the neatest art project out of your recycling bin, which equals FREE art supplies.

This frog puppet was created using baby food jar lids and a sour cream lid, both of which were painted green. We re-used art supplies with the googly eyes and large popsicle stick and cut out a tongue from some leftover pink construction paper.

We put it all together with hot glue (with mom controlling the glue gun and supervising construction.)

What can you create out of your recycling bin?

Try It Tuesday: Hand Print Mittens

These are fun, cute and provide a memento of the size of your child's hands for when they start to grow old too fast.

I let my kids do much of this on their own. For my son I did draw some mittens for him and them he cut them out, but for my daughter she drew her own mittens and did the entire project on her own. This was one of our winter "cold" no-school day projects.

Start out by having them draw and cut out mittens by using their own hand to draw around as you want to make sure their hand print will fit inside!

Then have them paint their hand and press it inside the mittens of the respective hand/mitten combinations.

This next step you have to wait until the paint dries, or you could do this step before the paint step and get it all done, but I did it afterwards. Just trace around the mitten with glue and sprinkle glitter all over. We also stapled a length of string to the mittens as well.

They don't make mittens that are attached like that anymore, but I do remember having a set like that when I was a kid. They were homemade, so maybe only mittens existed like that that were homemade.

Anyone else have a pair of mittens like that?

Wordless Wednesday: Owatonna Art Center Paint Pub

Another Paint Pub at the Owatonna Art Center is complete and you can see what we did there. We were given a famous painting to look at and paint it with our own twist, all while enjoying some wine and fabulous company. My piece is not quite complete as I still want to add some shadowing to the flowers, buy you can see it as it is so far. If you want to see the other 2 times check out these:

Mountain Scene Painting

Large Flower Painting

The other "Pub" type class I attended was this Book Arts Class or you can check out all My Pottery Creations that I have made there or read my Hand Behind the Wheel Post about when I took a 7-week pottery class there.

Try It Tuesday: Recycled Flower Art Project & GIVEAWAY

Well, if you remember that last week I shared with you my review of YoYummy Yogurt and mentioned that I had an art project to share with you in regards to re-purposing the caps. Well, here it is.

This was my son's idea. He kept insisting that the caps to the YoYummy Yogurt looked like flowers. We have seen caps on other squeezer products, but this is the only one that had indentations that made it look like it was petals.

The "grass" is just stuffing that came in a gift that I saved to use for art projects and to use in other gifts. It makes great grass! And then we just used some green popsicle sticks that I bought as a pack of colored sticks form the dollar store (they dollar store is a great place to buy art supplies for kids!) and some construction paper.

I let each of the kids work on their own creations. I also got out the tub of art scraps if they wanted to embellish more, which my daughter did and she added more flowers using beads, buttons, gems and pom poms and also added a butterfly made from string, yarn and construction paper.

GIVEAWAY

I have also included the giveaway I mentioned in that YoYummy post. They gave me almost $15 in coupons towards YoYummy Yogurt, but since it is not at a store near me I am unable to use them and want a reader who is able to use them to have them. They are for (10) $1 off 4-packs and (10) 50-cents of single yogurt.

To Enter:
1) Leave a geniune comment below with your email address
2) Pin this on pinterest and come back and leave a comment with the url to your pin
3) Tweet this & come back here and leave your tweet url in the comments:

#Win 20 coupons for @GrnMtnCreamery YoYummy Yogurt from @jshallow01 in this #giveaway http://tinyurl.com/lwapmty

Giveaway ENDS on midnight on February 16, 2014

Review: Kelly's Kits

I received one Kelly's Kits to use with my kids in hopes that I would review it on my blog. The above is the kit I received that is called Frosty Frescos. It includes a watercolor paint set, 2 paint brushes, 2 salt packets and a small packet of watercolor paper and instructions.

First off, I need to say that I was happy that the paint brushes were of a decent quality and not plastic bristles like in most kids paint kids. We will get a lot of use out these brushes and are happy we can reuse them. I am also pleased with the colors of the watercolor paint set, as they are not the "normal" colors that are in kids paint sets. It really helped make it feel like between these more natural looking colors and the paint brushes that they were professional artists. The paper is also a very nice quality as well for painting on with water colors. Overall, I was happy with the quality of the supplies included, but I was expecting a nicer quality project kit like this for the price of $9.99.

Each of my kids and myself painted our own Fresco. There was only 2 salt packets and it seemed like each picture needed it's own packet, but you can just use salt from your home. So, we created 3 pictures, but we still have about 5 more sheets of paper left as well as plenty of paint and brushes that we will continue to use for a long time. So, all in all, I think this kit was priced decently. And it can be even cheaper if you sign up for a longer subscription than just buying one month. Also, the kits include FREE SHIPPING!

To Find Out More Information About Kelly's Kits Online:

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