My last post shared some beautiful mandala paintings we created on the first day of our Spring After School Art Club.  After that we continued to explore circular designs using different materials

My neighbor knows I teach art classes to kids, and asked if I had any use for these round cardboard pieces.  They came with a new set of bowls,  and instead of recycling them she just knew they could turn into a fun art project. I agreed.

Instead of turning them into flowers or suns or another specific design, I decided to leave the project opened-ended. I set out a variety of materials, and gave some tips on how they might choose to use the materials (such taping the end of a piece of yarn onto the back of the cardboard before and after wrapping or weaving). We used tempera paint sticks, sequins, pony beads, glue, and tape.

Here are some of the charming results, currently adorning our art studio.

Last May I posted about a fun mandala painting project.  Well, we tackled it again on the first day of our spring session of After School Art Club.  It’s a project where everyone can easily feel successful, there’s definitely not one right way for it to look.  

I won’t add too many more words to this post, since I did that last May.  Instead you can just enjoy the results.

Shaving cream marbling is a fun sensory art activity with beautiful results!  

What’s “marbling”?
Marbled paper is paper that has a swirly, marble-type pattern on the surface.    

What does shaving cream have to do with this?
​I’m glad you asked.  There are a lot of ways to create marbled paper, but we used liquid watercolor, shaving cream, and sturdy white paper (we used cardstock). You’ll also need some sort of tray or pan to put the shaving cream on, and something to stir it with (we used a stick).

I have my supplies!  Now what do I do?
First spray a generous amount of shaving cream onto your tray or pan.  Drop in the colors you want to swirl together (my son wanted all the colors)

Next mix the shaving cream. This is a pretty fun part. 

Finally, press your paper onto the colorful shaving cream.  Take it off, wipe off the excess shaving cream, and viola!  You have your beautiful marbled paper.

You can rinse and repeat as many times as you like. I guess I should say wipe and repeat, not rinse. No rinsing is involved. Use a new paper each time and before long you’ll have a stack of pretty paper to used as note cards and gift tags. 

We enjoyed adding more shaving cream and more paint, because why not?

I like to keep a stack of marbled paper at my desk.  You can create collages out of them, or just pretty notes to yourself.

About a year ago I had this wild idea of teaching art to kids from my home.  I had taught in a classroom and at another art school setting, and just really wanted the freedom to plan my own classes, connect with neighborhood families, make my own schedule, and have my son with me along the way.  So Bright Art Studio was born!

Now, we are about to embark on our second Fall session. I can’t believe a year has gone by already!  We first opened our studio last fall and had 2 precious afternoon art clubs for the first session. I am so thankful to those families who took a chance on us and signed up when it was all brand new.

In case you haven’t heard, our Fall ‘22 session of art clubs has just opened for registration.  Check out the offerings here.

Why sign up for an Art Club?

I’m glad you asked!

Here are four reasons:

1. Making new things builds problem solving skills. Rarely does art go according to plan. Artists learn to pivot and adapt each and every time they create.  They learn to be comfortable with making a mistake and turning it into a beautiful oops

2. Clubs promote community + creativity. The same artists show up week after week. They are always giving each other ideas, encouraging each other, and negotiating sharing the art supplies.  The older kids help the younger kids, and the younger kids inspire us all.

3.  Clubs provide opportunities for artists to process their worlds.  Art provides opportunities to process, de-stress, & unwind.  To create rather than consume. 

4. Art is fun! We use high quality art materials, teach proper technique of mediums, & let the kids take it from there. Your artist will leave art club each week excited to come back. 

A few weeks ago, our Junior Art Club tackled a classic entry-level weaving project, God’s Eye Weaving.  All we needed for this project was sticks from my backyard and yarn. I personally love repetitive and tedious art projects, and weaving in general is something I’m interested in learning more about. God’s Eye Weaving is so simple and accessible though, you don’t need a special class or book to understand it. (I won't go into detail about how to create this project, but this blog post does a great job of it)

This was a group of 4-7 year old artists,  and I was so impressed at how even the youngest artists dove in and kept going even when the yarn got tangled and confusing.  I also loved how the older kids helped the younger with tieing knots to switch colors.  

God’s eye weaving is originally from Mexico (more about that here).  My son and I were at the Portland Art Museum just yesterday and spied some God’s eye weaving on a new mural in honor of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  (The first photo below is a progress shot I got of the mural  a few weeks ago).

It was Ransom’s first time at an art museum (more on that in a later blog post — taking young children to art museums).

If you’re twiddling your thumbs this summer, I’d encourage you to grab some twigs, drift wood, or popsicle sticks and do some weaving!  

A couple of weeks ago, After School Art Club dove into this fun and relaxing painting project.  (The inspiration for this project came from the Art Room Blog)

We started by reading The Dot by Peter Reynolds. 

​After reading the book aloud, we got out our tempera cake paints and painted some big colorful dots! Then we went around and around and around the dots until our paper was full of colors.

I didn’t  expect this, but we also got to learn some color theory. Layers of paint  overlapped and formed new colors!

After letting the paint dry, I got out some black liquid tempera paint and we added patterns to our dot painting. In each layer of color, I encouraged them to experiment with different lines and shapes. I explained that what we were making — this circular design with repeating patterns -- is called a mandala. People all over the world create mandalas to help them relax, meditate and pray. 

What started as a dot, turned into quite a lot!

I thought I’d pop in and share these stylish clay birds and nests we made in After School Art Club recently.  We used air dry clay to construct a simple pinch pot for the nests, and then created our birds with two smaller balls of clay, plus a little beak. (I got the project idea from this YouTube video.)

Then I set out some beads, sequins, and feathers and we  bedazzled our  birds!  Which is always the most fun part,

After the clay had a week to dry, I provided some Modge Podge for the kids to paint on their birds and nests (over everything except the feathers).  This made their projects smooth and glossy, and protected all their little piece from falling off.  

While they Modge-Podged (I guess i can make that a verb?), I read aloud Ruby’s Birds by Mya Thompson.  In the book, Ruby learns the value of staying quiet and still to notice with her eyes and ears the beautiful birds in her park.  Every page of the book has various birds hidden throughout, and we enjoyed pointing them out.

The first meeting of our Junior Art Club (4-6 year olds) for the spring session was last Wednesday.  I wanted to do a project that was more process than product-oriented, and that got kids comfortable creating and making mistakes.  

So we started by reading one of my favorites, Ish by Peter Reynolds, which I mentioned back in the post about my favorite picture books about art-making. In the book the main character, Ramon, gets discouraged and crumbles up all his attempts at drawing.  He then discovers the freedom of just drawing “ishly” aka, not aiming for prefection.  

After reading Ish together, we dove into our project.  We took some watercolor paper and cut it into 4 pieces (I got the idea for this activity from this blog post).  Nobody cut in a straight line, but they were straight-ish. Then we crumbled up our four pieces of paper, just like Ramon in the book did.

Next, we got a little messy. I passed out cups of liquid watercolor.  They chose one color to paint over their whole paper ball.

Then they flattened the paper to see how things were looking, crumbled the same paper again, and painted another color. I encouraged them to repeat this process about 2 times, for a total of 3 colors.  

It created such fun, colorful, and surprising results.  And something else fun and unexpected was that we got to discover how to make new colors — like noticing that when you paint blue on top of yellow, you get green!

And all our hands got covered with watercolors.  We all left the studio looking like artists for sure.

The mini paintings are fun on their own, or we could repurpose them into a collage project later in the session, I’m still thinking about it. 

And you know what else is cool?  In our second session, yesterday, I was leading the kids in making clay turtles, and when telling them to make their clay into kind-of-like-a-ball, one of the little  artists said “Ish!  A ball-ish!”  I was so pleased.

 Now we can talk about our art that way, and it’s so freeing.  

​Here are those turtles from yesterday.  Some of them are more turtle-ish, but they are all precious.

During every session of art clubs I try to tackle at least one sculpture project. For Winter ‘22 I dove into paper mache.  Confession — I myself had not done a paper mache project since high school (I made a paper mache panda, it was pretty darn cute if I remember correctly).  I knew it was messy and I also knew it was relatively simple. So I was a little intimidated, but also knew that we could do it.

I decided to focus on a simple bowl form, using a balloon as a base. ( I got the project idea from this blog. ). When the kids first walked into the art studio, they were super excited to see a bunch of balloons in bowls.   Then we mixed up some paper mache with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water; they shared with their neighbor and mixed it all up with their hands. Some of the kids loved digging their hands in and getting all gooey, some not so much. 

This project is great for using up scraps of paper from old projects or junk mail. Cut the paper into strips,  dunk it in the flour + water mixture, and put it on half the balloon.  We tried putting on 2-3 layers, but it was kind of hard to keep track.

Some tips I want to remember for next time: when the kids are done, have them clean up their little drips on the floor with a damp rag themselves. With the first art club, I cleaned the floor myself after everyone had gone home (and we had eaten dinner and put Ransom to bed). The drippings had dried, and I had to use a LOT of elbow grease. The next day the kids cleaned up their drops themselves (4-5 year olds) and it was so easy! Also, when walking to the bathroom to wash hands, have kids hold their hands together so there are less drips.  Sensing a theme?  Paper mache is messy!  But that’s why you have an art studio — a safe place to make a mess!

Anywho, the next week we had the joy of popping the balloons and painting our bowls.   They had a blast mixing the paints and adding color to their creations.

Another tip I’d like to remember for next time: painting the bowls completely white first makes the other colors much more vibrant.  I might insist on that next time. 

Either way, these young artists did a fanstastic job and really dove into this messy project.

As a parent and art teacher, I’ve grown to love children’s literature.  I’ve spent many, MANY hours cozied up on the couch reading picture books with my son, and I also love to connect art projects to books. We take weekly trips to the library, and I’m always finding new treasures.  Today, I’m going to share with you a few picture books that I find particularly inspiring for art-making.  Reading them aloud encourages my own artistic soul, and I hope my students feel inspired as well.

Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzber
This book holds a special place in my heart.  I first encountered it when I was student teaching back in 2011. My mentor teacher would always read it to her elementary aged students at the beginning of the school year.I think it  sets such a great tone for the art room — and for life!  Any oops can turn be turned into something beautiful.  I love being able to use that vocabulary with my students — and myself — “Let’s turn it into a beautiful oops!”

It’s Okay by Shiow-Miin Thai
This book is a similar theme to Beautiful Oops. In it, a child’s drawing keeps turning out in ways the little artist doesn’t intend, but his mom encourages him that it’s okay, and the art takes new directions.  Our artworks rarely turn out just like we imagine, but it’s ok, it can become something we new!

How to Spot and Artist by Danielle Krysa 
This book is one of my new favorites. I recently found it at the library and just loved the message and charming illustrations.  It’s emphasizes how artists can come in all shapes, sizes, and personalities.  And speaks to how all artists deal with “art bullies”, or discouraging thoughts and words about their artwork.  And the solution? Make even more art! Which reminds me of one of my favorites quotes:  “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” -Andy Warhol

Ish by Peter H Reynolds
This picture book is one of many that Peter Reynolds has written that speak to the creative process.  It’s about a young artist who discovers the freedom to live “ishfully.” In other words, to ditch striving for perfection and just make stuff!  We’re not robots, we’re artists.   I honestly have to remind myself of this a lot when drawing.

I love discovering new picture books.  If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them!