Not Your Everyday Homemade Christmas Presents

I've been a busy elf making Christmas presents for friends and family.

Here are a couple of the presents I've made. Since they've been given, I can share!

The first is a sign that says "Not My Monkey, Not My Circus." I gave these to teacher friends. We teachers easily get caught up in things that are out of our circle of influence and get bogged down in areas of the school that we have no control over. It's nice to be reminded to let it go! And there is just something fun about saying... not my monkey, not my circus...about things that bother us that we can't fix!

I screen printed the signs. I made close to 50 to end up with 10 decent signs. It was one of those projects! Who knew that the black chipboard would turn the white ink PINK! Grr.  I did make a tshirt for myself. :)

Then Saturday night, Libby came over and had me scan an old recipe from her husband's side of the family. We talked about the recipe and the heritage and I was inspired to go make up something for my sisters and my dad for our Christmas celebration.  

I have to say... my keeping of all things turned out great for this project as years ago I scanned in my Grandma's recipe, so I just had to find the file on the computer. And then to find the picture of my Grandma in her kitchen, I went to the tote of leftover pictures that my parents left here when they moved. It's not the best picture of my Grandma in her kitchen, but it didn't matter for this project!

So an hour later, I had these babies printed! I used Grandma's Lime Jello Salad for a couple of prints and her Big Red Ice Cream recipe for a couple of others.  

It was a fun project. I slapped them into the leftover frames from my teacher project. So really, it's a double gift. Behind the recipe project is the screen printed sign!

I love making gifts for people.

I've got a couple more that need to be made today..

Performing and Visual Arts Camp 2013. Done!

Another year of camp complete! It was a great week, very busy, but very fulfilling too!

 

I think we had about 50 campers plus maybe 10 high school volunteers. This year we added a Photography Camp to the Performing and Visual Arts portion and I think that went rather well. The yearbook teacher taught that portion, the theatre teacher taught the performing arts portion and I taught the visual arts portion. We made a great team and I think all of the campers left happy.

 



 

I didn't take very many pictures of camp in progress this year... the photography kids did. But now I don't have them to blog about. I'll have to get some in action shots!

 

Here is one camper and her completed sculpture. I have to say, I love the sculpture project. I might even use it in my art 1 class!

 

Below are some pictures of the 20 minute musical the kids performed. It was called Spaced Out and they did an awesome job. We love these musicals and will use this company for next years production. It is published by Hal Leonard.

The campers made their costumes/props, "painted" murals, screen printed their tshirts and learned lines, songs and choreography!

 

 

Don't you love the changing murals! We used periaktoi (tall triangles that turn) and covered them with black craft paper. Then I sketched the scene on the paper and the kids using oil pastels "painted" the murals. It worked fabulously! I can't believe theatre people haven't started using this in shows! It's cheap, easy and no clean up! We are going to be doing this for theatrical productions starting in the fall! I had one classroom set of the crayola oil pastels and figured we would use them as long as they lasted. Umm. We didn't even make a dent in my supply! I am really pumped about this find!

With this year's camp complete, summer really begins for me! And we are already thinking of next years camp!

The reason why people don't do DIY craft projects!

With art camp this week, I have been working on screen printing tshirts with the kids. My issue is different than a normal/typical DIYer. I have screen printing stuff.. the real stuff.. but in order to use the water based screen film that I would normally use, I would then have to use smelly not-child-friendly paint. So, I looked to another format. And it was a LOT of trial and error. But I was determined!

I have used my Pazzle in the past to cut vinyl and use it to make a temporary stencil on my screen. This works great for a simple image with little to no text and very few small lines. The reason is that the vinyl just doesn't last on a screen for more than a handful of prints. This is a GREAT way to make screen prints for a small project, but not when I need to screen something 60+ times.

So, I have looked at the Tulip Screen It machine a number of times over the last year and really wanted one, but I didn't want to spend the money on one. ($150 normal price)

But, last week at Michaels they were on clearance! So, I invested $50 in the machine and bought 2 extra films also on clearance.  I figured with 4 films, I could do a lot of fun things.

I took it up to school and read all of the directions. I thought, cool I can do this. My gosh, I am a seasoned traditional screen printer. This should be easy.

WRONG!!!!!!! And if I hadn't been determined to find a way to print with water based inks I would have given up!

Take a look at the process... side note: all of the films have ink stains as I tried in vain to see if they would work...

This is the graphic that I wanted to burn into the film. The real copy didn't have the green background. It was a really nice black and white super clean print.

Film 1. Done EXACTLY to the second based on the written directions IN THE BOX.

You can see that it is a partial burn. I scrubbed and scrubbed and all it did was nothing...

Film 2: Once again done exactly as directed. I thought, maybe I just didn't do something right.

Results? Better... but still not a full burn.

Film 3: I let this one burn a little longer thinking that maybe the machine needed to warm up.

Results? Its a beautiful UNUSABLE film. The image is burned on completely, but the pink stuff didn't release fully. At this point I am soo frustrated.

But I have one more shot.

Film 4:

An almost full burn, but the Out burned through.

So at this point, I am beyond frustrated and I have figured out that the problem is that the machine burns too hot where the lamps are hitting and not hot enough elsewhere.

I'm ready to throw in the towel, but I can see that this would work, if only I could figure out how to make the burn right.

So I go online. And guess what? THEY HAVE REVISED INSTRUCTIONS!!! You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I just burned FOUR FILMS at a total waste of money and effort because they did not put a message on the packaging that the directions were WRONG!

So I go to Walmart where I remember them having the film and bought ONE MORE film. At full price ($18) no less. I follow the new instructions EXACTLY and look.

Film 5 is perfect.

This picture is AFTER over 60 prints. Amazing. This is what I was hoping for!!

And here is one of the shirts.

The kids had such A-HA moments when they made their shirts.

But sometimes, you get bad bleedouts. Like this one. I hate to waste shirts. ugh.

So what do you do? You paint a black square and print in another color!

 Here is the stack of shirts that the kids help to print. Every child pulled his or her own shirt. I am so proud of that. It is soo worth the effort in my book.

And what kind of ink did we use?

It was awesome, no stink and easy clean up.

And truly, this is why people hate DIY projects.

I'm proud that I persevered and got the job done. It is so much more meaningful to the kids to learn the how and why's of something. The junior high students that were too cool for some of the activities got to see in action how to fix a screen, clean a screen and all of the ins and outs of screen printing. These kids will remember this project every time they buy a tshirt.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of the kids in action to share soon!

Screenprinting with kids. It's not as scary as you would think!

It's art camp week.  It's been a crazy busy, but very good week! One of the things you know about me is that I hate cheapo crafts that don't teach anything.. so for our Performing and Visual Arts Camp, my co-teacher and I really worked at making sure that camp activities were meaningful and not something every kid could do at home!

I think we have done a great job.  Day 1, the kids learned how to sew a vest, they painted a mural, made puppets and learned about stage directions and practiced their play. Day 2 they learned about printmaking and made a brand, they did scratch art, decorated their vests, and learned their lines and practiced the plays. Day 3, they worked on memory books, practiced their plays and finished their vests... and screen printed their tshirts. Yes. screen printed!

Some would call it a nightmare :) It was nuts, but so very, very worth it!  I only have pictures of my girls doing this on the blog, but multiply these intent faces and their joy and multiply that by the 50 kids at camp!!

Now, this is not a project for a novice.  Even with years and years of screen printing experience we still had issues.  At the last moment I changed brands of paint and it was too thick and pulled my first two films to bits. It was crazy.  But, I quickly cut one in vinyl and we started again.

Almost every child at camp pulled their very own shirt.  I think we had a few that didn't get to, so I'm going to let them screen print something today! I want every camper to get to pull paint through the screen. It's kind of addicting.

After camp was over, we needed to screen the volunteer shirts. So my girls and my co-teacher's girls screened those.  New screen, new paint..

The girls each got to pull a couple of shirts and even did one on their own.

I love having these pictures. My dad taught me to screen print as a child and I love that my girls enjoy it too!