The Little Red Hen

Sticks

I hope you all had a great weekend. I was at the Alma Highland Festival with M. This was his last Alma festival with the Chelsea House Orchestra and they had some great shows. We still have one big travel gig left with the group. In July they will be performing at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games.  I am looking forward to that trip. If you happen to be at the games, stop by and say hi!

I have finally gotten caught up on my bee blocks for the Flickr girls. Lisa wanted red blocks with "sticks". These were fun and quick to make.

Looking at them now I think I should have made some of the sticks more wedge shaped. Still, I think they are pretty fun.

I'm glad to be caught up as June starts because things are really getting busy around here.
In the next six days we are looking forward to:

Senior Music Awards dinner
Grandma comes to visit!
class night
art club art show
Graduation party
Graduation
a 6 year old birthday celebration
the arrival of 25 baby chicks

Whew. I'll be happy when school is out for the summer!

Thoughtful Sunday

"It is only when one has grown old and dull that the soul is heavy and refuses to rise. The young soul is ever winged; a breath stirs it to an upward flight."

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1903.

Book Binding Tutorial

Over the last few days I have been working on making books from the cover papers that we made in art club last week. This is how I did it:

Materials needed:
Decorated paper for cover (these were papers "painted" with colored tissue paper)
Mat board or heavy cardboard (frame shops may have scrap mat pieces)
plain white paper (or other paper for pages)
paste glue (I used Yes glue)
colored duct tape

First,  make the pages to insert in the book. I used ten sheets of regular copy paper. Fold the paper stack in half and stitch (on a long basting stitch) along the fold line.

Next, cover the mat board with the decorated paper. I neglected to take photos of this procedure. I hope you can figure out what I did. 

Cut each decorated paper in half and used half for the front cover and half for the back. Next, glue the mat board to the paper leaving 1.5 inches on three sides and trimming the fourth side (spine of the book) even. I then trimmed the two outer corners at a 45 degree angle so that when the edges were turned in and glued down they fit together in a pretty miter.

Duct tape is used for the spine to hold the two halves of the book togther. Lay a piece of duct tape sticky side up on the work surface and then place the book covers on the tape as shown. Make sure to leave about a quarter of an inch between the edges of the cover so that there is space for the section of pages to go.

Next, fold down the ends of the duct tape.

Spread glue over the front and back of the page secton and place it even with the inside edge of the back cover. Carefully close the front cover so that the edges of the book are even. Press firmly together.

I am thrilled with how these turned out.

Most of the students made papers with many colors on them.

A few students used warm or cool colors for their covers.

This was a fun project. Older children would be able to complete the books on their own but I thought that was asking a lot of the K-2 age group.

I hope the students will enjoy having these blank books to keep.

Black Dots

This week in art club we read the book Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews.  We talked about a lot of things that the dots could become in a picture.

I took my one inch circle punch and the students punched out circles from black paper and then created a picture.

They were very creative


and came up with a lot of good ideas for their black dots.

Next week is the last week of art club for the year. There will be an art show on June 4 from 1-3 at the Chelsea Center for the Arts. If you are local, come to the show and see what the art clubs have been doing. I teach K-2 art club but there is also an art club for 3rd, 4th, 5th and a middle school art club for 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Artwork from all three clubs will be on display.

Kapow!

We are having another rainy day.

Wordless Wednesday

Stars for Sarah

Last night I made M's graduation and recital invitations so I rewarded myself with a bit of sewing machine time this morning. Here are the results of my play time!

These blocks are for Sarah. She requested orange, yellow, pink stars on turquoise, aqua, blue background. She wanted one block of four stars and the other to be one BIG star. The 12 inch star went together in a FLASH!

I am pleased that I found all of these fabrics in my scrap pile! Oh, Sarah, just so you know, P has pajamas out of that pink with aqua dots. The yellow with flowers is a vintage piece that used to be something - I don't know what.

We will not discuss the fact that Sarah's Bee month was April.... I am just thrilled to have made these fun blocks this morning.  Some day I'll be caught up. Maybe.

I'm off to the garden.

Have a great day.

May Merriment

There is always a flurry of activity in May. There is much to do outside in the yard and gardens, in addition to end of school activities. This year we also have a lot of graduation related events.

This weekend P and I worked a bit in her fairy garden. The plants from last year all look happy there. We put in a few new plants but still have quite a few seeds to get in the ground.

We put in fence for the peas and weeded the vegetable garden. B did a bit of mowing and working on the house. D installed the toilet in our new bathroom upstairs! M wrote a term paper and had a couple of music gigs. P had her spring recital with others in the studio. I also made 20 books covers from these papers for the art club students.  We have all done a bit of spring cleaning.

When it gets crazy busy like this I do try to make time to walk the yard and see what's in bloom.

I don't want to miss any of that!

Since on the go knitting seems to be all I can fit in for now, I have also been progressing on a few portable projects like new socks for B.

That yarn in the background is making its way to the top of the knit pile too! I need to decide what to make with it.
I'm currently working on socks for myself using the same rib pattern as these mitts.

Today I hope to make M's graduation and recital invitations. He has a much bigger list of people to invite than his brother had two years ago.

 

 

Painting with Tissue Paper

This week in Art Club we painted with tissue paper.  The technique is really fun and easy. All you need is some heavy paper that can take getting wet, tissue paper that will bleed (spectra tissue works really well), and a spray bottle of water.

The first step is to tear the colored tissue into smallish pieces and arrange them on the heavy paper.

Next, spray the project with water. Make sure that all of the tissue is wet and touching the paper (the color will only transfer where the tissue touches the paper).

The last step requires patience. - Let dry.  As the tissue dries the color will bleed onto the paper below. Anywhere that the tissue colors overlap will give a blend of color that is sort of magical to watch.

After the project is dry it is time to remove the tissue paper. If you remove the tissue too soon, the paper underneath may get damaged or torn.

We plan to use these papers to make covers for books that the students will take home at the end of the year.  I have sewn blank papers (copy paper folded in half) together for the middle section of the book. The covers will be mat board covered in our tissue painted papers. I think we will use black duct tape for the spine.

I'll be sure to show you some of the finished books.

Before I do any more on the books I need to make some graduation announcements and senior recital invitations for M.  There is never a dull moment here on the farm.

Foraged Food

We had a cool rainy weekend which, I understand, is great morel weather.
We made quite a haul today.

And they were not tiny either.
We'll be having some mushrooms in our dinner tonight.