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!

Another Thank Your Card and a Fun and Easy Technique

Don't you just love this fun card?!!?!

It was so easy too.. even better!

Close To My Heart is showcasing the flower petal technique on page 13 of the  new catalog,
so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I have to say, it was sooo easy and looks soooo good!!

Have a great day!

Ink on Glass

My sister’s birthday is this week and I wanted to make a little something for her.  So I combined one of her favorite verses with a technique I had been wanting to adapt for crafting and here are the results!

I printed out the verse on cardstock and layered it in a 9”x9” frame. I then took out my caligraphy pen and ink and started going over some of the lines on the front of the glass.  I really like how the brown ink matches and highlights the colors in the background paper.  One would have thought I planned it :)

The hardest part of this project was deciding when to stop adding color.  I wanted the ink to be seen, but not overpower the rest of the piece.

  Supplies: CTMH Boom-Di-Ada papers and Barn Red ink, frame from IKEA and calligraphy supplies (see below picture.)

Hope you like this Libby and have a great birthday!

Another new technique: Faux Mesh

Here is another new technique that I stole off Splitcoast Stampers and changed up for use with inks.  This technique is easy and doesn’t have to dry which is really nice.

While I have mesh in my stash that has been sitting around waiting to be used for years, in the end, I like this better!  One piece of mesh (or drywall tape) is all you need for lots and lots of creating. And you don’t have to wait until you have the perfect use for silver mesh.. now you can have any color!

I cut a piece of my adhesive-backed mesh and rolled it onto my brayer, choose an ink color, and started rolling!  When I wanted to change colors, I just brayered a wipee and that was it!

I hope you can see the mesh pattern on the different pieces of cardstock.

Supplies are Close To My Heart except for embellishments
Paper: Boom-Di-Ada
Ink: Autumn Terracotta, Sweet Leaf, Cocoa and Goldrush
Stamps: Gracious Greeting and Picture Perfect

Emily

Accordion Slider Album

I saw the idea to make a paper album with sliders somewhere in the internet world, but the lady was only selling kits and to get the template you had to purchase a $30 kit.  I of course thought to myself.. what the heck! and made one myself.  I don’t know what the original dimensions were or how it was done, but I am happy with mine and I am happy to share what I did :)

First, here are some pictures of the album open and laying flat on the table so that you can see the hidden parts that slide out!

And more pictures..

    

I loved making this and seriously thought about keeping it for myself.. but once again, I gave it away as a thank you gift.  I seem to be indebted to a lot of people these days!  However, I think I’m gonna have to make one of these for me :)

If you want instructions on how to make this, give me a few days, but email me to remind me and I will get a link posted on how to do this.

Have a great weekend and I hope to be posting more treasures soon!

Emily

Supplies: CTMH Silhouette papers, CTMH Desert Sand ink, embellishments from a variety of sources.

Acrylic Resist Cards

Wow is all I can say about these cards! I LOVE how they turned out!! As cool as they look in the picture, they are even better in person :)  I can’t wait to give these away!

To make these cards, you need acrylic paint, I used the metallic paint daubers as they are super easy to use and no clean up.  I precut my base cards to the size I wanted and then stamped each base with the background stamp and let the paint dry.

Then I took my brayer and ink and layered on ink and then burnished it in and off the paint with a paper towel.  The green card I used tint instead of ink.

Then I created my cards.  That’s it!  See the pictures for more details about the products.

View Full Album

Here are the finished cards.