Mosaic Painting

Arjun and I love to do projects together.  This is one that took us several days, but we are both very proud of it!  We used boxes cut into 2" X 2" squares to make tiles and fit them onto a grid.  The tiles are made from cereal boxes and the gridded base was made from a box used to ship large picture frames to me at school.  I saw a little version of this on Lil Blue Boo a few months ago and did a similar project with the 4 year olds at my school. 
I had the whole thing set up for him to start when we got home in the afternoon.  He was excited to start as soon as he saw it.  "A puzzle!" he said.

Arjun arranged all of the squares (some of them were arranged under the backing) and I helped him glue them to the cardboard.  He liked rubbing the glue stick onto the backs of the squares, but they were the sticks with the spongy pads that need a little squeeze to get the glue to come out.  He had trouble with the squeezing part.  He was surprisingly good at following the grid!

I let the glue dry under a heavy board overnight.  In the morning, it was set up for painting and printing.  When that became old, I hung it on the easel.....

Then back to the floor again.  We took turns printing on it.  Arjun did all of the brushwork himself.

We both love it!

More Mummies!

Arjun and I were Mummies for Halloween........

Grape Hyacinth Bulbs

Yesterday, Arjun and I planted 50 Grape Hyacinth bulbs in honor of someone we are missing.

Mummies

We are in the Halloween spirit around here.  Check out the Fifth Grade mummy  dance party!

Miro paintings

In Kindergarten at my school we spend the whole year in Art looking at and talking about shapes and colors.  We talk about mixing colors.  We use all different kinds of materials. We play games with shapes and colors overlapping and peeking out. We look at the work of Abstract expressionists and try to imagine how they might have made the marks they did.  This is one of my favorite projects ever and here are some examples of the amazing work these kids have created!

Mesopotamians Shirt

Arjun LOVES this song:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAMRTGv82Zo

He loves it so much that I made him a shirt to wear while he is singing along.  Of course, I realize now that I will need to make him another Mesopotamians shirt since he wants to wear this one everyday.

Dress design for Shabby Apple Dress Competition

Shabby Apple is a very cool dress company! Take a look at their designs!
http://www.shabbyapple.com/

They are hosting a competition for a spring dress design and this is the dress that I have come up with.
It is simple and comfortable. When I design clothing, I do the designing as I am stitching. I put this one together with fabrics that I had on hand. It is a combination of rejuvenated clothing and new yardage. I drew my colors from the central piece that was formerly known as a dowdy old turtleneck. I'll be wearing this dress to work tomorrow, but if it were springtime, and I had a "springier" green fabric available, I would use that for the sleeves and bottom swirl. I think I'd shorten the sleeves as well.
Here's the link back to the site:
http://www.shabbyapple.com/
Donna, thank you for the pictures! The top one is my favorite!

Andy Goldsworthy

Arjun and I made our own Andy Goldsworthy style sculpture while cleaning up the yard.