This Week....

This has been a busy, busy week at school! Lots of creating! Painting is happening, drawing is happening, ideas have buzzing through the art room like bees around flowers :)
We have a three day weekend as Martin Luther King Day is Monday. Enjoy the pic's of the creating that has been my week with the kids at school! If you have a three day weekend also enjoy it and take a moment to think about why we have it...

Have a great weekend! 

Mrs."C"  :)

Hands and Hearts

   This was a quick project I did on Friday afternoon with one of my two Extra Art groups. My other group will create them next Friday a.m.  We had some snowy weather Friday morning that made the roads quite slick and we had a lot of late arrivals to school. Since at the time of class there were only 2 of the 6 kids present we decided to wait until next week to make them.  My afternoon group of four got to make theirs and we had a great time.  Upon seeing my example one of the kids asked, " Can I make one?" To which I replied, " Yes, you can!"
Each student chose a color to print their hand onto and glued them to their black background. The students each painted their hands white, two of the kids laughed the whole time their Para helped paint their hand because they said it tickled! After printing they chose and glued their painted paper heart to the center of the handprint. While they washed up I placed gold, pink, light blue and lavender paint on the table with several different sized circle objects they could stamp with on the table. They stamped their borders and placed them on the drying rack to dry when they were done.  In person they are quite beautiful! These are keepers all the way around!

I'm in the process of making a pile of tiny grannies for a new cushion. Their fun, their quick, just what I need this weekend! 

Hope you all have a great week and stay warm if you are in the polar freeze with the rest of us this weekend!

Mrs."C"  :)

Back to Reality...

Tomorrow it is back to reality.... time to step back into the world... a new year... I don't make resolutions as they really are hard to keep as time goes on... my word for the school year has been and continues to be, Inspire.  I use it everyday... I say it to the kids at school... we talk about how everyday we are inspired by others in many ways...

I spent my break crocheting for hours on end, binging on Netflix and disconnecting from everything that didn't matter... it was awesome! I couldn't tell what day it was, I didn't know what the weather was until it happened, I couldn't tell you what was happening in the world outside my little cocoon and I didn't care... I stepped away from the outside world and it was very relaxing... I made the occasional trip to the market for things we needed and did go to a few stores after the holidays but soon came home because the crowds were nuts and people were rushing around like ants...

I needed solitude... I needed time to re-charge... I needed time to create...

I finished a couple of projects that have been sitting in my basket...

I was inspired by the beautiful bags from Bookhou to redesign a tote I had lying around into a new, amazing bag for me to carry through the winter months into spring...

I started with this...

Took the handles off, made a tiny leaf stamp, mixed up a brown that matched the purse strap that I took from an old bag that I disassembled for the hardware and printed the design after I did a few test swatches on scrap fabric to see how it looked...

I made a lining from some stash fabric, added a pocket inside recycled from a pair of jeans and added a zipper to the top...

I hand sewed the strap on by following the holes from the previous stitching... it was slow and frustrating at times to find the holes to stitch through but I got in a groove and trudged through... it was worth it...

I started a new shawl using the graph from a Japanese pattern... I don't have any true red shawls, this yarn is the perfect shade of red ( it translates a little brighter than it is in this picture).

I'm back to adding more rows to my poor neglected crocodile stitch shawl that I started in August...

for now I'll run a couple of errands, do some laundry( it would be good to have clothes to wear tomorrow), eat some more food ( like I haven't eaten enough these past couple of weeks...salads here I come...), figure out where we left off at school and get my thoughts organized for tomorrow.... Hope you all have a great week!

Mrs."C"  :)