A Relaxed Kinda Monday: I loved my Monday off. I spent the day shopping with a good buddy and devouring sushi with a my ole student teacher. I'd do that everyday if I could. dress and sweater: Anthro label picked up at a second hand shop; tights: Target; boots: Frye, bought at a second hand shop I don't know how ya'll spent your Saturday, but I spent mine chillin' out and chatting with over 1000 art educators. At my mother-in-laws. In Birmingham. Whilst wearing my pajamas. No, moms-in-law and I weren't hosting some sort of Art Teacher PJ Party (although that does sound like a rip-roarin' good time), I was attending The Art of Education's 2014 Winter Conference! It was such an amazing day with so many presenters and so much information that my little head is still spinning. Thankfully, Jessica of The Art of Education has allowed attendees access to the presentations so that I can go back and watch what I might have missed. Did ya'll attend? What are you excited to try in your art room? Me, I just went out and bought 10 dry erase boards today to use as free draw and sketching as was suggested by Art Teachers Hate Glitter...genius! Now if you happen to have found me and this blog after viewing my (painfully goofy) presentation on Saturday, welcome! On this here blog, I try to share a DIY project, an update of what's happening in the art room and a wrap-up of my weekly outfits (along with a featured artist) each week. To keep up with all that crazy, you can find me on facebook here. Also, if you're into reading books and drawing pictures and chatting with other artsy peeps, you might consider joining in on our Artsy Book Club! We will be drawing our way through the book One Drawing a Day by Veronica Lawlor. Our start date is next Monday, February 3rd but you can join the fun and begin creating any ole time. To set the mood for our upcoming drawing adventure, and because he's the Artist of the Month in the art room, I thought I'd share drawings from Vincent van Gogh... Self-Portrait 1887 oil on panel ...who, with his read beard and long skinny nose kinda resembles my hubs. Although, not gonna lie, van Gogh actually looks a little less hobo than my man. But whatcha gonna do. So, ya'll know the sad story of van Gogh's life, right? He became an artist in his late 20's after trying his hand at selling art (which his brother Theo was successful at doing), teaching and preaching. I have a feeling his manic personality frightened many and prevented his success at those chosen careers. So he decided to pursue his childhood passion of art. 1888 Fishing Boats at Sea pen & ink...looking at these drawings, you have to admit, van Gogh was a master mark-maker. I cannot believe the amount of depth and value he's able to create in this sketch with just pen and ink. Looking at his paintings, I don't often think of van Gogh's work as detailed and intricate...but looking at this drawing makes me think differently. Tuesday: I haven't a clue what we did on this day, isn't that the saddest thing ever? I've started keeping a little book where I write a couple of sentences of what happened that day...but that would mean I'd have to get off the couch, find said book and read what happened. And there's currently a cat planted on my arm...so I'm not going anywheres. dotted sweater: thrifted; dotted shirt: Old Navy; skirt and shoes: Anthro; dotted tights: Target Two Hands and Peasant Woman Stooping and Gleaning black chalk on paper...so I've read that when van Gogh initially decided to become an artist, he took tons of drawing classes and just drew continuously. It's amazing when you look at a body of his work, his drawing improves drastically. I'm hoping that the same will happen to me during the course of our drawing book. Wednesday, Already?: The lovely thing about a short week is that it's, well, short. sweater: Anthro, picked up second hand; skirt: J.Crew, very old; tights: Target; shoes: Anthro 1884-85 Head of a Young Man with a Pipe pencil...I love his portraits. They remind me of Alice Neel's work. And I love her stuff. Sunflowery Thursday: On this day after school, a buddy and I drove to Nashville's art museum, The Frist Center for Visual arts to drop off student masterpieces! It's always an exciting time for the kids. I have 10 students whose work will be on display there and I know they couldn't be more excited. sweater: DIY here; dress: vintage, thrifted; tights: amazon; shoes: Anthro 1888 Arles, View from the Wheat Field pen & ink...again with that off-the-chain amazing mark-making. There's so much going on in this drawing and he's able to capture it all. Nutz. Feelin' Snippy Friday: Okay, art teachers...isn't this the best dress ever?! I wish I could take credit for it...I found it on Modcloth a week or so ago in their sale section. Sadly, it's no longer there. But I do think it could easily be replicated. It's a sweatshirt so it's just about the coziest thing ever. dress: Modcloth; tights: Target; boots: The Walking Company 1888 Fishing Boats at Sea pen & ink...and while the other drawing was so busy, I love all of the feeling of air and space in this piece. It's interesting that by not making marks, he's able to say so much.

Monday: I wore my new necklace! And totally felt like I was wearing a chain of Gobstoppers all day. It's a lotta balls but can you really have too many? necklace: DIY here; dress: thrifted, vintage; belt: from another dress; pink fishnets and blue tights: Target, maybe?; shoes: Anthro; shoe clips: thrifted Whilst doing bus duty this afternoon, I had two interesting conversations with the under-10 set. My first was with a second grade girl. It went a little something like this: Second Grade Gurl: Mrs. Stephens, look at me! Me: Okay. I'm looking. What? SGG: This is Thee Cutest I've been all year! (said with a flourish of the hand from her head to her feet) I NEVER get to wear cute things because, you know, I have brothers (eye roll and sigh). I had to give the poor kid a knowing nod. Say no more, sister. I taught those brothers. After she boarded the bus, a fourth grade girl stopped dead in her tracks and said: I'm not getting on that bus. Me: Uh, yeah you are. FGG: No! I'm going home with you! Me: Really? And what do you think we'd do at my house? FGG: Watch t.v.! Me: Sorry. I don't have a t.v. FGG: Really? That's gross. The kids is crazy. And with the full moon, the crazy weather we've been having and the fact that we are a breath away from Thanksgiving Break, the kids are even crazier. Which I didn't even think was possible. If you scroll down a pinch, you'll see the Rene Magritte-inspired mural that my third grade students have been working on. What I didn't realize until I posted that photo on Facebook and it was pointed out to me, but their mural also bears a striking resemblance to some of the work by M.C. Escher. So I thought I'd share his work with you in this here post. So Maurits Cornelis Escher (is it any wonder why he went by M.C.? Duh, because Master of Ceremonies, yo!) was a Dutch artist who lived from 1898 to 1972. Can you imagine living thru that time in history?! Wow, the changes he must have seen. Escher was a not considered a good student in elementary school and repeated the second grade. I can't imagine how he'd far in schools these days what with the constant testing and hoops to jump through. His genius would have been given a label. I wonder how many genius kids among us are going through that very thing right now. Okay, stepping off El Soap Box. Star Wars Tuesday: So the Star Wars soundtrack I ordered for the kids came in and we blasted it in the art room. The only prob is that opening song is loud and proud which got the kids all ramped up. I had to switch back to Harry Potter for a couple classes (ya'll, that CD is THE BEST at calming the kids down) but we did listen to the Cantina Band song for clean up. Star Wars dress: made by me, DIY here; jacket: old, Modcloth; tights and boots: Marshall's Totally Escher-esque, right? The third grade have been learning all about Rene Magritte (you can see my artist outfit here) creating these night and day birds and painting clouds for the mural. I'm hoping to have it up and ready to share with you soon. It actually looks a lot different now, this was just the kids laying out their birds. Seriously. How did I need see the connection? So it turns out that after spending some time in Italy (which just sounds lovely. Let's go, shall we?), Escher was influenced by some intricate and geometrical designs he saw sculpted into the walls and ceiling of a castle. This sparked an interest in repetitive and interlocking patterns that would become his signature style. Wednesday: I don't remember anything about this day. It must have been a wild one. I bet I had kindergarten on that day...which is why I remember nothing. sweater: thrifted; dress and shoes: Anthro; tights: Marshall's Now, I'm not much of a fan of math but it appears that those that dig math, also dig Escher. And while he wasn't trained in math, Escher had a great understanding of it visually which is best seen in his tessellations. I've always been amazed by his drawing skills and the magic of his work. Hot Pink Thursday: This dress required that hair. It was a prerequisite. dress: vintage; tight: Target; shoes: dunno, I can't see 'em and I can't remember. That's pretty bad. I think introducing Escher to the kids will be fun. And while Escher's work appears surreal, I don't know if he really falls into that movement being that he came upon the scene later. What do you think? It will definitely be a fun follow up to our unit on Magritte. Have you art teachers taught Escher? Do you happen to have a favorite lesson that you could share because that would be totally rad. Show Your Tats Friday: It never fails, when I wear these tights, I get the constant question: Are your legs tattooed?! Naw, kid. It's just sharpie. I got bored when the last class was in my room. sweater: vintage, thrifted; top: gift from a friend; skirt: Marshall's; tights and necklace: Target; shoes and belt: Anthro I love Escher's work. I really dug it in high school and then went through this seriously snobby phase in college because every other dip in my dorm had either an Escher or Klimt's The Kiss hanging in their room. However, after doing some digging (and uprooting my dorm room posters, ahem), I've got a new appreciation for the dude. I'm excited to dream up a lesson based on the work of this incredible artist.

Feelin' Frida-ish Monday: I have a coupla after school art clubs, in those small groups, we have the most enlightening convos. One girl asked, "We learn about men artists a lot. Aren't there any girl artists?" I had already been thinking about how I'd like to introduce more contemporary artists next year (this guy does it all the time and has me inspired) but now I know that more female artists need to be thrown into the mix. So! What contemporary/female artists do you introduce in your art room? dress: thrift store; necklaces: Forever39, ahem, 21; belt: Anthropologie; tights: Target; boots: Seychelles I don't know what life is like on your end of the world but I'm sure it's crazy-busy. Especially if you are a teacher. End-of-the-school-year projects to wrap up, mountains of artwork to sort for our school-wide art show, let's-get-rid-of-this-stuff spring cleaning, the list grows by the day. So this week, I thought I'd share with you just some of the things we've been working on in the art room. Complete lessons on this here blog to come, but for now, you'll have to savor these sneak-peaks. AND, just so's ya know, Wednesday, April 30th is the LAST CALL FOR THE BEST DRESSED ART TEACHER CONTEST! Yes, I'm shouting at you, that's how excited I am! So many of you awesome art teachers have sent me snaps that left me rolling in laughter (which is a good thing, I swear! Ya'll are the best!). What's the Best Dressed Art Teacher Contest, you ask? Well, here's the details: Nominate yourself or an art teacher buddy! Simply send an email to me at [email protected] with a photo of your best artsy look. High resolution photos preferred, please. Please include a short bio about the art teacher and what inspired the look. Photos and bio will be shared on this blog on April 30th. Open voting on this blog will end on May 5th and the winner will be announced May 7th! The winner will receive a magical prize along with an interview on this blog. So! what are you waiting for? Shoot me an email, you crazy art teacher, you! So if I'm not found Buried Alive under the 400+ clay projects that the kids have created over the last coupla weeks, it'll be a miracle. These clay stars were created a couple months back. Our original intent was to glaze them and "sell" them back to our parents with the proceeds going to charity. However, due to some personal stuff, that had to get placed on the back burner. But now we're back! And I just knew I'd never be able to get 400+ stars glazed and fired along with all those projects. So I lurked the interwebs for a possible solution and saw something about coloring clay projects with crayons...(well, construction paper crayons were recommended but, in the state that my room is currently in, there was no finding mine)... We painted over them with watercolor paint (I asked that the kids pick just one color, por favor) and viola! Colorful and completed in a snap! More details about these stars and how they were created in an upcoming post. Bump-It Up Tuesday: So I had a hair appointment after school on Tuesday (not that you'd ever be able to tell I got my hair cut. I'm such a chicken, I always just get a couple inches taken off. So boring!). Once seated in the hair-cuttin-hot-seat, I proceeded to unravel the following from my 'do: 11 Bobby Pins, 2 Pink Bows and 1 Extra Large Bumpit. My hair dressers reaction, after regaining her thoughts, "Ohmigawd, IS THAT A BUMPIT?!" I live in the South, ya'll! It's Big Hair or Die! shoes, sweater and top: thrift store; skirt and belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing Speaking of clay projects...my 3rd graders created these Chinese-inspired clay dragons. Ya'll, this project was such a hit! I would easily do this again with all grade levels. The creativity was off the chain crazy! I can't wait for them to glaze them so I can share the easy-peasy lesson with you. Some of my 4th grade students created Panda's with Personality (oh boy, ya'll. Do they ever have personality!) while another group created Asian elephants inspired by the painted elephants in India. Many added jewelry, fabric and flowers to their elephants. I have a feeling these are going to be the most colorful elephants ever. So Stinkin' Tired Wednesday: Seriously. The end of the school year is near...and my work load only builds as I'm sure yours does as well. This photo was the only one I managed NOT to be yawning my head off in. dress: vintage, thrifted; tights: Target; shoes: Dolls by Nina After finishing off our clay projects, We Returned to Our Normally Scheduled Program, Already in Progress (said in that officially dorky voice). Which means my 4th graders added either bamboo, cherry blossom trees or pine trees to their large (12" X 18") watercolor painted backgrounds. Lesson to come, promise! What is Wrong with You, Thursday?!: Wow, this outfit was a let down to the folks, both big and small, in my school! The 4th grade decided that they had never seen me in "short shoes" (um, I'm guessing that means flats?!) and my librarian buddy dubbed this a "too normal" of an outfit. Humph! Time to get outta these Short Shoes and step up my Non-Normal game, I guess! top: Target; skirt: vintage, etsy; shoes: gift; headband: made by me; necklace: The Paper Source Meanwhile, in 3rd grade, we excitedly finished these Ming vase inspired still lives. We spent a long time on this project but learned so much...I'll be sharing this lesson later this week. Stay tuned, ya'll! Hittin' the Town, Friday: Almost everyday after school, there's something going on. Whether it's an art club or meeting up with buddies, I'm always running. I had decided that, with art show approaching, I should spend more after school time in my art room...but I just can't! Not with buddies that I need to chat and shop with. Tamara, thank you for snapping this photo at my happy place -- Anthropologie (where I walked out with a not-at-all-necessary $298 dress for $26, eeee!). dress: made by me (go here for the craziest food-processing-foot-cutting story everrr) My 1st grade friends made clay koi fish...and while those dry, they are creating these koinobori (Japanese for Carp Kite) for May 5th which is Children's Day in Japan. I actually picked up these die-cut paper fish years ago through Roylco and never got around to having the kids create them. This time it worked to be the perfect tie-in, as well as a super short project while our clay drys out. I'll share with you more about this project soon. Ah! So much to share with ya's!

Squidward Monday: I scored this Artists Only Squidward shirt at a resale shop and love it as did the kids. It was the perfect comfy thing to wear on a Monday because, let's face it, Mon-daze are no bueno. top: Buffalo Exchange but also available at Forever21; Matisse-inspired skirt: estate sale; tights: Target; shoes: Fluevog Sup, buddies?! I do believe it's been a good coupla weeks since I've shown y'all what I've been a-wearing but it's totes not my fault. I've not worked a full week since the holidays, I swear! And it currently seems like I'm buried under my To-Do lists, swimming upstream from the piles of student artwork, stacks of personal projects and just mounds of STUFF. Every weekend, I try and catch up and every Monday, I'm all... But, whateves. We're all busy, right? It's just a matter of managing the messes. Which, as it turns out, I'm suck-tastic at doing. Oh well. I take heart in knowing that I've got another shot at getting my life together every Monday. Wish me luck, y'all! Crayon-tastic Tuesday: My fourth graders are in the middle of some crayon-inspired projects. They are making three-dimensional papier mache'd crayons as well as team-work collaborative two-dimensional designs. That lesson (with video!) will be up on my blog this week. I wore this lil ensemble for some inspo! crayon sweater: made by me, DIY here; crazy art teacherin' skirt: made by me, DIY here Honest speaking: I don't do many team projects. Okay so maybe I've NEVER done a team project. Mostly cuz I didn't know how it would pan out...would the kids get along, would I need to intervene, would they be able to pick their teams, etc. Well, I gotta say, I'm a convert! This has been such a success so far. I only had to step in to tell 'em to stop and clean up! Like I said, this lesson will be up on Tuesday this week so stay tuned (but if you wanna see the lesson video now, go here)! If you follow me here, you've already seen a sneak preview of how these are turning out! Hump Day!: My mission of late is to be as comfy as possible so this sweatshirt and stretch pencil skirt is the new yoga pant, says me. Also, I'm totes on a combat boot bender, y'all. I've bought two in the last month. I love the stacked heal but also the comfort. It also reminds me of my 1990's alternative-dressin' days! Keith Haring top: Forever 21; skirt: old, Target; boots: Aldo I shared my firsties Mad Scientist lesson with y'all here. Here was our final installment of the lesson: bubble printing! It was just about the most funnest thing ever and reminded me about everything I love about teaching art. Lemme tell you how we did it... Firsties at their finest! To make the bubble printing paint use the following: aluminum pie pans, dish soap, water and paint. I add about two table spoons of soap to the pan with nearly a 1/4 cup of paint. Then stir in about 1-2 cups of water. There really isn't any exact science to it, I just dumped stuff in but for those of you that like measurements, there you go. Stir it around and it's ready! I had four students at each table with four different colors in each spot: red, blue, black and yellow. The kids were armed with a straw and a piece of construction paper (any thicker stock paper would work). I then told the kids our routine. When I hit my chime once, they place their paper in the corner of their table and blow into the pan in front of them. When I hit the chime again (10 seconds or so later), they were to "Smash Them Bubbles!" which quickly became our new chat. Then I would say, "Move to the right, move to the right, take your paper and your stray and move to the right, show me you're ready!". The kids would place their paper in the corner of their table again, bend down in front of their new pan and wait for the chime. It worked great! The next day, I spent about 10 minutes gluing their artwork to their new frames. They look fab, says moi! We're Almost There, Thursday: So the rumors went to flying about bubble printing! My kindergarteners came in asking if they were going to do it because their sibs had told them all about it. Made me so happy! AND I had totes planned on them doing it as well so they were thrilled! sweater: Boden, thrifted; dress: Modcloth; boots: Frye; necklace: Paper Source; belt: Amazon Finally Friday!: By the way, if you are curious as to why I am standing in front of the same stinkin' back drop this week, it's because my art room has become the armpit of the school. Between bubble printing, papier mache, printmaking, chalking, painting and collage, the art room looks like, well, an art room. But I thought I'd spare you the gory. sweater: old, H&M; paint drip scarf: flea market; scissor skirt: old, Modcloth; boots: Frye; palette hair clip: DIY, here Just in case you were wondering what my cabinet said! You can take a tour of my art room if you are interested here!

Hey, Pencil Dress! You can find out all the details of this dress, including where I scored the fab fabric right here. HOW DID IT HAPPEN THAT IT IS NOVEMBER ALREADY?! Like, who allowed that to happen? Who gave this year permission to fly by at the speed of light leaving me behind on all things! Y'all I know I say this all the time but MY HEAD IS JUST BARELY ABOVE WATER...maybe it's because...well, I'm in the midst of finishing my SECOND BOOK! Sweater from Urban Outfitters, skirt by me, details here! That's right! This one is the same format as my Clay Lab book but it will be all fibers. Coming up with over 50 fibers projects for kids has been a feat. Y'all know that I love to teach fibers and have been doing sewing, weaving, felting and more with my kids forever...but coming up with even more projects has basically fried my brain. It was a small brain to start with. And now it's basically burnt to a crisp. And I feel bad because I know I've missed out on sharing so much here, on this blog. This is such a fun place for me to share lessons, what I'm wearing and what I'm creating...but I've had to give up some of that to push on with the book. I know I'll be happy in the end (like, when I'm DONE!) but right now, it kinda bums me out that this space has been neglected. I'm sorry! More videos and posts to come. By the way, these Loud Mouths were created by my KINDERGARTENERS and you can find the video lesson here. Found this old photo of me back in '81, totally rockin' the teacher bun! AND kinda lookin' like a hostess from Shoney's. I've also been busy hitting fall state conferences! Last month I went to Florida's conference where I was one of the keynote speakers and presenters...y'all. It was such a blast! Florida knows how to conference! I'm excited to be heading to Connecticut this weekend to speak and present there too! I've also been getting ready for our Artome Art Show! I'm doing a new lesson with my fourth graders this year and I'm so excited about the results. I will DEF be sharing this lesson with you as it was one that the kids and I really enjoyed. Crayon sweater needle felted by me, details here! Also...it seems that I don't often share that I have a podcast so I'm just gonna throw this out there as a reminder! A new podcast airs each Thursday and I'd love it if you gave it a listen. Also, if you have any suggestions for podcast topics, I'm always open. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments. After saying all that...I guess I can see why I feel like my head is just above water! In other news, check out these cute suns that my kindergarten created...it inspired one of my fourth graders to stitch up this sun pillow during her recess/stitching time. Isn't it the cutest? The suns were created for these cuties. I'll be sure to share this kindergarten lesson with you soon! I hope y'all have a wonderful upcoming week! Check out my pencil dress here!

Hey, Pencil Dress! You can find out all the details of this dress, including where I scored the fab fabric right here. HOW DID IT HAPPEN THAT IT IS NOVEMBER ALREADY?! Like, who allowed that to happen? Who gave this year permission to fly by at the speed of light leaving me behind on all things! Y'all I know I say this all the time but MY HEAD IS JUST BARELY ABOVE WATER...maybe it's because...well, I'm in the midst of finishing my SECOND BOOK! Sweater from Urban Outfitters, skirt by me, details here! That's right! This one is the same format as my Clay Lab book but it will be all fibers. Coming up with over 50 fibers projects for kids has been a feat. Y'all know that I love to teach fibers and have been doing sewing, weaving, felting and more with my kids forever...but coming up with even more projects has basically fried my brain. It was a small brain to start with. And now it's basically burnt to a crisp. And I feel bad because I know I've missed out on sharing so much here, on this blog. This is such a fun place for me to share lessons, what I'm wearing and what I'm creating...but I've had to give up some of that to push on with the book. I know I'll be happy in the end (like, when I'm DONE!) but right now, it kinda bums me out that this space has been neglected. I'm sorry! More videos and posts to come. By the way, these Loud Mouths were created by my KINDERGARTENERS and you can find the video lesson here. Found this old photo of me back in '81, totally rockin' the teacher bun! AND kinda lookin' like a hostess from Shoney's. I've also been busy hitting fall state conferences! Last month I went to Florida's conference where I was one of the keynote speakers and presenters...y'all. It was such a blast! Florida knows how to conference! I'm excited to be heading to Connecticut this weekend to speak and present there too! I've also been getting ready for our Artome Art Show! I'm doing a new lesson with my fourth graders this year and I'm so excited about the results. I will DEF be sharing this lesson with you as it was one that the kids and I really enjoyed. Crayon sweater needle felted by me, details here! Also...it seems that I don't often share that I have a podcast so I'm just gonna throw this out there as a reminder! A new podcast airs each Thursday and I'd love it if you gave it a listen. Also, if you have any suggestions for podcast topics, I'm always open. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments. After saying all that...I guess I can see why I feel like my head is just above water! In other news, check out these cute suns that my kindergarten created...it inspired one of my fourth graders to stitch up this sun pillow during her recess/stitching time. Isn't it the cutest? The suns were created for these cuties. I'll be sure to share this kindergarten lesson with you soon! I hope y'all have a wonderful upcoming week! Check out my pencil dress here!

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Mondrian Monday: Ah, the day before the art show. Always 100% white-hot panic enduring. Thankfully my library buddy (hi, Barb!) offered to take my classes so I could spend the day unloading 400 clay projects from the kiln room and transforming the art room into a miniature gallery. She was a life-saver, I tell ya! Mondrian dress DIY: blog post here; shoes: from a friend Oh, hey! Look who said "I'll be right back on Wednesday with an art show blog post!" and then promptly when MIA. What can I say, I succumbed to pure exhaustion (even missing the end-of-the-school year party to collapse in bed at 7:30 on Thursday night). Not to mention, I didn't say which Wednesday I'd be talkin' at ya, did I? Lemme see if I can pull together that art show post this week. There's just so much to share I almost don't know where to start (including my secret recipe for hanging artwork that will NEVER HAVE IT FALL OF THE WALL AGAIN)! I'll be giving you a sneak peak in this here blog post. Another thing that's had me busy is my full blown attempted at declutterin' my life. I'm in it for realz this time, y'all. I'm reading this great book that I've told nearly everyone who will listen to me (which means I've told 5 people.) The book is The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Have any of y'all read it? Her whole theory is that you should only keep stuff that brings you joy. And she says you should start by decluttering your closets first. Y'all. Do you even KNOW how much clothing I have in my closets?! It's.In.Sane. In an attempt to declutter, make some cashola and share my amazing vintage finds with the universe, I've been spending the weekend snapping photos and uploading lovelies into my etsy shop: vintage domestic. I'll keep y'all posted on what other goodies I add in el shoppo. Oh! And I toooootally forgot to mention, I'm now on summer vacay! Hurray! Which means endless days of crafting and sewing whilst soaking up the summer sun are in my future, eeeee! Chat soon, y'all! I have a love of vintage clothing. Much of this clothing I'm selling are pieces I've been collecting since high school. Sadly, most have never been worn due to fit issues or simply the fact that I've no place to wear them. It's very hard for me to say goodbye but I know they'll go to someone who can truly appreciate them. Art Show Tuesday: My sweet mom drove 7 hours down from Indiana to attend my student's art show. She's done that a couple of times in the past, usually arriving early enough for me to put her to work. She wised up this visit...although I did have her help me bag and tag clay projects the following day. I'm one of those evil people that if you pop into my art room even for a moment, Ima put you to work, even if you are my mama! splatter paint dress: made by me, DIY here; sweater: Betsy Johnson; sandals: ooooold, Target Our annual art show is BANANAS, y'all. It was established well before I got there and it's always a packed house. I think we had well over 450 attendees with a school population under 400. We also provide free ice cream so that's a big draw: if you feed 'em ice creams, they will come. The Aftermath Wednesday: I felt like I'd survived a Great Wave after all that! My mom and I spent the day bagging and tagging clay projects with the teachers as they brought their kids to my room to collect their work. In my art show post, I'll 'splain to you just how I run the Big Fat Operation that is an Art Show. Great Wave dress: blog post here; sweater: Target The hubs was my super sweet photographer during the art show. He took a ton of snaps, can't wait to share them with you! More Me Made May Thursday: I really didn't think I'd have enough clothing to make it thru this month of me-mades but it turns out Ima have plenty. This little vintage hankie skirt I created ages ago after seeing on similar in Anthropologie for One.Million.Dollars. Or $100 which is pretty much the same in my checkbook. top: vintage, gift from a friend; skirt: made by me, here We had wall-to-wall clay projects on display in the art room. My second graders created those butterflies (we were on a butterfly roll, with this and that, what can I say?) and my third grade sculpted the flowers (complete lesson here). School's Out for the Summer Friday!: Oh, yeah, y'all. I'm ready! Although it came so fast and after so much stuff going down, it almost seems unreal. By the way, that skirt was created pre-blogging days! Twas my first (and currently last) article of clothing in which I stitched an invisible zipper! That's on my summer to-do list. top: I dunno, Target?; skirt: made by me with vintage and new fabric

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Feelin' Funky Monday: I wish I'd snapped a better photo of this skirt because it's straight up amazing. I scooped it up at the super fantastic etsy store SassySenoritaVintage (great shop, awesome seller!). It's completely hand appliquéd and so detailed. After receiving it, I thought I'd try my hand at the same appliqué method only to find that it's super intense! That's a DIY that might take a while. top and necklace: Anthro, gift from a friend; skirt: vintage, SassySenoritaVintage; shoes: last season, Payless Hey there, all y'all! Unlike last week when I wrote this post, this week zipped by at the speed of light. And it's kinda freakin' me out to think that we'll be in September before we know it. So much art making to do, always so little time! Story of every art teacher's life. This week I thought I'd share with you a lil sneak peak of our dot-inspired projects for International Dot Day! At first it was kinda tough coming up with dot-esque projects...and now I can't STOP coming up with ideas! I'm trying to force myself to save 'em for next year. I mean, we can't have every project this year be based around a dot...or can we?! I'll share the complete deets on these projects when the kids have completed 'em. In other news: I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THE APRON SEW-ALONG! I've loved seeing everyone's creations thus far (some of you have even finished your aprons, you over-achievers!), it's been so inspiring and super fun. If you wanna join along and see what's peeps be making, go here. This week, I'll share with you how to finish that apron off. Then I HAVE A SURPRISE in store for those of you that complete your apron! But you'll have to wait for the final apron-sewing installment to find that out, eee! Also, can I just tell y'all how much I've loved hearing your stories of childhood memories that built the brick sh## house you are today?! I'm so inspired, happy, motivated-to-be-that-person-in-a-child's-life that you just don't know. You can still leave your story and be entered to win a Spiral Art Kit by August 31st. Looking forward to hearing from you! Finally, can we talk about the neglected elephant in the room: The Artsy Book Club? This week I'm gonna show y'all the influence the Teach like a Pirate book has had on my first couple of days/weeks in the art room. I've tweaked routine/lessons/song-and-dance a little bit and I'm looking forward to sharing with ya what's worked and what needs more work, if ya know what I mean. Alrightie, kids! I'll be back soon with more apron-age, a visit to my art room and a brand new DIY (er, finally! It seems I got a little distracted by Orange is the New Black marathons. My bad.). Chat soon! Second Grade Reversible Abstract Paintings: I'll share the complete lesson with ya when these bad boys are finished. But for now, lemme give you the short version: listened to a variety of musical instruments (my gong, rain stick, and this thing called a spring drum that I'll share with you this upcoming week) and painted a variety of lines. Our influence was Kandinsky and how music influenced his work. Once the lines were painted, we've started adding color. Some kids have decided to also embellish further with pattern. I'm hoping by next week or so we'll be ready to start on the other side of this pizza round (purchased through School Specialty for $16/100 rounds). Tacklin' Tuesday: Sometimes I get the question: How do you stay clean in the art room?! Well, I usually don't. Nor do my students. We're almost always in aprons but there are the occasions where we forget, there's a paint spill and clothes receive an unfortunate makeover. I had a sweet first grade student spill paint who FREAKED because she thought her skin would be permanently stained ("I can't be paint splotchy for the rest of my life!"...y'all, I tried SO HARD not to laugh). I thought we'd cleaned up the entire spill when a third grader came up to me later with the very same paint on her skirt (there'd been a blob hiding on the table, just waiting to attack). I felt so bad! But the next day, she came in with a bag of chocolates for me and a kind note from her mother telling me that "this happens, no worries." Gah! Such kindness. And chocolate! top and shoes: thrifted; skirt and necklace: Anthro First Grade Concentric Circles and Radial Designs: For the dots in first grade, the kids painted their plates with a concentric pattern and then added detail in tiny brushes with black ink. Once complete, we created those painted papers (one side textured the other side dot-stamped) which we'll use to enhance our plates. This is gonna be for a great big hairy group project that I just can't wait to show you! Deets to come, y'all. Dang! Can you believe some of that detailed first grade painting?! I mean, these kids are 5 years old, y'all! Maxi Wednesday: This is my Art Teacher from the 1970's ensemble. You like? I'm into this whole bright color/ethnic pattern thing that I'm seeing everywhere and it's totes influencing my outfit choices. dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Sparkly Relief Dots by Third Grade: So my third grade kids cut out a circle from a styro plate and then added smaller styro circles on top of that. Once complete, we hit it with some spray glue, covered it with foil and they went to town creating their designs. They're kinda like round zen-tangles. I really like how they are turning out...but I'm uncertain just who we'll present these to the world. I'd love to hear your thoughts...should we simply mount them on a piece of construction paper? Maybe continue the line design on that background paper? Or perhaps create a design on the reverse and hang them mobile style? I'd truly love some input, y'all! Thursday, Already?: This week seemed to zip right by for me. And next week will be the same as we have a half day on Friday and Monday off. Then, it will be SEPTEMBER! How in the world did that happen?! dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Because I love them so and didn't think the first photo did 'em justice, I thought I'd share some close ups. String Art in Fourth Grade Land: When I was in fifth grade, we did this really fun string art project that I still have. I thought it was the best thing ever...and decided that my fourth grade should experience that fun-ness too. So we've spent the last couple of art classes decorating our boards (with a lil texture combin' and splatter paintin...since I was an 80's child, splatter paint seemed appropriate). The kids also had to start punching the correct amount of holes into the board and practicing their design ideas. Their fingers are itching to start stitching...and I'm excited to say we'll begin next week! A Friday with Balls: Holy crap, when I saw this crazy ballsy outfit at Anthropologie recently, I knew I had to have it in my life. Of course, I waited around until the sucker was on double markdown (I just cannot stomach purchasing full price in that joint or even first markdown for that matter). I did learn something interesting with this purchase: if they don't have your size in the store but have it online, you can purchase it in the store and they'll ship it FOR FREE to your house. Which saved me like $10 in shipping. everything: Anthro Speaking of shipping, there was some serious happiness in my mailbox this week! Artist and art teacher Daniel Langhans sent me those awesome CareBear stickers along with that rad card...and that envelope! You can find more of Daniel's awesomeness here: TiltedEarthStudios.com. I can't wait to enlarger that envelope on the copier and make it into a sign for my art room! And another art teacher buddy of mine sent me this gems she'd recently printed (Kelly, I LOVE THEM!). You can find handmade items by Kelly here: etsy.com/shop/jkmartinstudios. These prints totally put me in the mood for my fave holiday. I already have a place for them on the wall in our living room, I just need to get them framed. Funny thing is, both these awesome artists are from Arizona! Thanks guys!!

Feelin' Frida-ish Monday: I have a coupla after school art clubs, in those small groups, we have the most enlightening convos. One girl asked, "We learn about men artists a lot. Aren't there any girl artists?" I had already been thinking about how I'd like to introduce more contemporary artists next year (this guy does it all the time and has me inspired) but now I know that more female artists need to be thrown into the mix. So! What contemporary/female artists do you introduce in your art room? dress: thrift store; necklaces: Forever39, ahem, 21; belt: Anthropologie; tights: Target; boots: Seychelles I don't know what life is like on your end of the world but I'm sure it's crazy-busy. Especially if you are a teacher. End-of-the-school-year projects to wrap up, mountains of artwork to sort for our school-wide art show, let's-get-rid-of-this-stuff spring cleaning, the list grows by the day. So this week, I thought I'd share with you just some of the things we've been working on in the art room. Complete lessons on this here blog to come, but for now, you'll have to savor these sneak-peaks. AND, just so's ya know, Wednesday, April 30th is the LAST CALL FOR THE BEST DRESSED ART TEACHER CONTEST! Yes, I'm shouting at you, that's how excited I am! So many of you awesome art teachers have sent me snaps that left me rolling in laughter (which is a good thing, I swear! Ya'll are the best!). What's the Best Dressed Art Teacher Contest, you ask? Well, here's the details: Nominate yourself or an art teacher buddy! Simply send an email to me at [email protected] with a photo of your best artsy look. High resolution photos preferred, please. Please include a short bio about the art teacher and what inspired the look. Photos and bio will be shared on this blog on April 30th. Open voting on this blog will end on May 5th and the winner will be announced May 7th! The winner will receive a magical prize along with an interview on this blog. So! what are you waiting for? Shoot me an email, you crazy art teacher, you! So if I'm not found Buried Alive under the 400+ clay projects that the kids have created over the last coupla weeks, it'll be a miracle. These clay stars were created a couple months back. Our original intent was to glaze them and "sell" them back to our parents with the proceeds going to charity. However, due to some personal stuff, that had to get placed on the back burner. But now we're back! And I just knew I'd never be able to get 400+ stars glazed and fired along with all those projects. So I lurked the interwebs for a possible solution and saw something about coloring clay projects with crayons...(well, construction paper crayons were recommended but, in the state that my room is currently in, there was no finding mine)... We painted over them with watercolor paint (I asked that the kids pick just one color, por favor) and viola! Colorful and completed in a snap! More details about these stars and how they were created in an upcoming post. Bump-It Up Tuesday: So I had a hair appointment after school on Tuesday (not that you'd ever be able to tell I got my hair cut. I'm such a chicken, I always just get a couple inches taken off. So boring!). Once seated in the hair-cuttin-hot-seat, I proceeded to unravel the following from my 'do: 11 Bobby Pins, 2 Pink Bows and 1 Extra Large Bumpit. My hair dressers reaction, after regaining her thoughts, "Ohmigawd, IS THAT A BUMPIT?!" I live in the South, ya'll! It's Big Hair or Die! shoes, sweater and top: thrift store; skirt and belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing Speaking of clay projects...my 3rd graders created these Chinese-inspired clay dragons. Ya'll, this project was such a hit! I would easily do this again with all grade levels. The creativity was off the chain crazy! I can't wait for them to glaze them so I can share the easy-peasy lesson with you. Some of my 4th grade students created Panda's with Personality (oh boy, ya'll. Do they ever have personality!) while another group created Asian elephants inspired by the painted elephants in India. Many added jewelry, fabric and flowers to their elephants. I have a feeling these are going to be the most colorful elephants ever. So Stinkin' Tired Wednesday: Seriously. The end of the school year is near...and my work load only builds as I'm sure yours does as well. This photo was the only one I managed NOT to be yawning my head off in. dress: vintage, thrifted; tights: Target; shoes: Dolls by Nina After finishing off our clay projects, We Returned to Our Normally Scheduled Program, Already in Progress (said in that officially dorky voice). Which means my 4th graders added either bamboo, cherry blossom trees or pine trees to their large (12" X 18") watercolor painted backgrounds. Lesson to come, promise! What is Wrong with You, Thursday?!: Wow, this outfit was a let down to the folks, both big and small, in my school! The 4th grade decided that they had never seen me in "short shoes" (um, I'm guessing that means flats?!) and my librarian buddy dubbed this a "too normal" of an outfit. Humph! Time to get outta these Short Shoes and step up my Non-Normal game, I guess! top: Target; skirt: vintage, etsy; shoes: gift; headband: made by me; necklace: The Paper Source Meanwhile, in 3rd grade, we excitedly finished these Ming vase inspired still lives. We spent a long time on this project but learned so much...I'll be sharing this lesson later this week. Stay tuned, ya'll! Hittin' the Town, Friday: Almost everyday after school, there's something going on. Whether it's an art club or meeting up with buddies, I'm always running. I had decided that, with art show approaching, I should spend more after school time in my art room...but I just can't! Not with buddies that I need to chat and shop with. Tamara, thank you for snapping this photo at my happy place -- Anthropologie (where I walked out with a not-at-all-necessary $298 dress for $26, eeee!). dress: made by me (go here for the craziest food-processing-foot-cutting story everrr) My 1st grade friends made clay koi fish...and while those dry, they are creating these koinobori (Japanese for Carp Kite) for May 5th which is Children's Day in Japan. I actually picked up these die-cut paper fish years ago through Roylco and never got around to having the kids create them. This time it worked to be the perfect tie-in, as well as a super short project while our clay drys out. I'll share with you more about this project soon. Ah! So much to share with ya's!

More Me Made May-ness Monday: Could I fit any more M's into that intro? Me thinks not. blouse: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; skirt: Made by Me, details here Hey, friends! I hope your week was fantabulous. This coming week of mine not only includes the last week of school but also our school-wide art show (yes, I know that's crazy...no, I didn't plan it that way). I'll be certain to share all the details of the art show with y'all in a super photo heavy blog post this Wednesday. That'll prolly be the next time you hear from me as I'm certain to be buried under artwork until then. In this here post, I'll give y'all a sneak peak into what the kids have been creating in preparation for el art showness. Also, since it's #MeMadeMay, I'm still sporting something I created daily. I'll be sharing all of these MeMades in a big fat post at the end of the month. Please, try and curb your enthusiasm. Until Wednesday, kids, fingers crossed I can pull off this art show! Toodles! Being MeMadeMay and all, I decided to go with a vintage tape measure as a headband and a wee lil vintage sewing machine brooch. Dude at Starbucks: "Is that caution tape in your hair?! Cool!" (insert head-banging-on-wall emoji here). Man, I gotta let you in on a lil secret. During these last few days of school, let the kids work on murals. Throw a big fat sheet of paper on the tables, let them work in groups of their choice, crank up the music to drown out the sound of their voices (I kid! Kinda!), give 'em a theme and watch 'em go to town. Granted, I did have a total of four kids completely loose their minds and paint their hands (like, two painted their hands red, y'all. Yes, they were caught "red handed". Sigh.) but for the most part, we had a great time. These will be used as the back drop for our Village of Kindness. Deets to come but a sneak peak here. Back to School Dress Tuesday: I crafted this dress at the start of the school year. It seriously seems like yesterday. With all of our snow days (I think we had 10?), this year seemed to zip by! Any of you teachers out there feel the same? dress: blog post here; shoes: Anthro, gift from a friend (thanks, Rebecca!) A while back, a teacher buddy gave me these huge posters of white paper. The kids have been painting circle paintings on them as another part of our art show excitement. You'll notice that not only are we painting but glazing clay projects as well. Ah, the end of the school year. Nothing like that rush to get EVERY-THANG done. At the last minute. Dresses Made During Snow Days Wednesday: Are really the best dresses, aren't they? I managed to bust out a ton of dresses this winter because of all those days. That was lovely. Not having enough time to finish all the art projects that I'd dreamed to doing with the kids? Not so much. dress: details here, y'all; sandals: like, ancient. Target I had kindergarten-land for the very last time this past week. We had a Yay-Boo moment. Yay, we'll see each other next year! Boo, this is our last art class as kindergarteners. So, we made a Kinder-Garden! We drew flowers in black oil pastel then painted them with either warm or cold colors. Then we switched the script for the background. I thought they came out just lovely. And one more thing to hang for the art show, yay! It's Come to This...Flip-Flops Thursday: I started the week in heels and by the middle, I was done. I scored these fun flips in NOLA. Get this, they smell like flowers! They are from a brand called Melissa that makes scented shoes. I love them! I was smelling my feet all day. Don't judge. sweater and brooches: thrifted; dress: made by me! By the way, this blog post, if you dare to read it, is INSANE...here; flips: Melissa brand OH, this excitement happened this week! Our "Johnson Elementary has Heart" mural went up this week! If you follow me on insta-gram crackers, you have already seen this. Full blog post to come...but until then, here's the start of our process. I love how this cheers up our front office which was formally referred to as the DMV for it's lovely drabness. Last Year's Back to School Dress Friday: Can I just brag and say that I've already got NEXT year's B2S dress in the werkz? Das right! Even if my sewing room did look like this just 24 hours ago (scroll downeth. Then scroll back upeth cuz I'm not done jib-jabbin' yet). sweater: Betsy Johnson, found at Buffalo Exchange; dress: blerg post here So. Can we have an honest chat here for a moment. I know when you come to this blog, like most, I show you the nice, clean and sunny side of my life. But I really, like really-really, struggle with packrat-itis. I recently picked up the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and I'm really enjoying it. Bottom line: get rid of anything that does not bring you joy. Now, I find that hard to apply as an artist/art teacher because, well, you never know, you know? However, this weekend, I decided to attack my sewing room (btw, welcome to my sewing room, y'all!) and, kidz, I gotta tell you, it felt so good! I'll be filling up my etsy shop with goodies next weekend, taking a truck load to Goodwill and tossing the rest. Ah! I can't even tell you how good this feels! My new motto is: nothing on the floor and nothing up to the ceiling (yes, it was that bad). I'll have to give you a tour soon!

Hey, sweet friends! I hope your week was a wonderful one...mine started out so super amazing as I had a visitor all the way from Australia! Thank you so much, Belinda for hanging out with me and my students. They LOVED having you as much as I did! Nearly all of my students were painting this week, from kindergarten through third grade. This was great because it meant low prep for me (aside from the initial painting prep which, as you know, is time consuming!). I love painting and I love teaching painting with my students. In fact, you can find out all about our supplies, set up and routines here! And, in case you are wondering, yes, my kids did draw all over this dress! Actually, they drew self portraits in the frames that was printed on this fabric and then I stitched it into a dress. You can find out more here. My third graders spent two art classes painting these large Chinet plates for their circle loom weaving project. On the first day, we reviewed painting routines and created concentric circles. On the second day, we painted patterns on our plates. These make me so stinkin' happy! I cannot wait to weave with these guys tomorrow! My latest new favorite thing: lidded ice cube trays. I found mine on the Walmart website but they are available in lots of places. The reason I love them: they gonna keep my paints from drying out. I've tried egg cartons and regular ice cube trays...but the paint always dries. Hoping these prove to be the solution. Since we are all painting, I thought wearing this dress would be the safest bet! Loved chatting with the kids about how I created it. Details here. My third graders are killlin' it with these plates and I'm so excited! I talk a lot about craftmanship in my art room...and you can read about that here. Kindergarten hopping on the Kandinsky train with these smaller cardboard circles they are painting for Dot Day. We totally didn't make the Dot Day deadline...and that's okay with me. These are so sweet! So I'm doing something crazy: I'm doing two different weaving lessons with my third graders! While one group is circle loom weaving, another is tree weaving. Before we could paint a landscape on our plates, we had to create two landscape painting sketches. These turned out so stinkin' pretty! Proper blog post on these to come...they will def be framed and featured in the halls soon! My first graders completed their HUGE 14" dots this week! I adapted a lesson that I shared here. On the reverse, we'll be doing something different than the blog post...I'll keep you posted. We will be hanging these like mobiles and I'm so stoked to see them up! Another day of painting, another painted dress by me. After creating their two small painting sketches, my third graders had to pick their favorite to paint on their plate. I'll keep you posted on how their tree weaving goes! YOU GUYS. LIKE, WHY?! I got a ton of questions on painting with children this week. So I did a blog post and have a podcast dropping later this week on this very topic! Check out my new art teacherin' tool belt! Chrissie makes them CUSTOM to your interests! I love mine. You can find out more about Chrissie and her designs here. FINALLY getting our Getting to Know You sculptures up. I meant to go in to school on Sunday and knock it out...no dice. Did y'all celebrate Dot Day? We did...we just didn't get everything up in time. Or AT ALL...and that's okay. I'm excited to see everything complete and on display. I cannot wait to share with you my sweet second grader's embroidery lesson. Stay tuned!

Hey there, friends! I come to you just as excited as this photo from Monday because...it's a three day weekend. Here's to staying in my pj's all weekend, watching The Office for the umpteenth time and working on all the projectzzzz. I hope you all are livin' it up and partyin' hard like me! To kick off the week, I wore my needle felted Kandinsky inspired dress to inspire my third graders as they started painting their plates for our Circle Loom Weaving unit. I've got several weaving videos on my YouTube channel if you are interested in bringing fibers to your art room. Just search my playlist Fibers! Many of my grades are kicking off the year with fiber arts projects like sewing, weaving and fiber applications. I'm so excited about that, here's just a peak. MANY more details to come, I pinkie swear! Of course, I share tons of sneak peeks here. On Tuesday I got all set to teach some of my classes about landscapes. They are getting ready to do my Tree Weaving project which means they gotta paint a landscape first. I was feeling all sorts of prepared. We partnered up and looked at the landscapes in those clear plastic sleeves. The kids had to work together to find the horizon line, the back-, middle- and foreground. It was a GREAT pre-assessment. Then we went over the vocabulary and corrected our mistakes. I chatted about scale, perspective and atmosphere. We were just getting ready to paint when the fire alarm went off. C'est la vie. After being outside for 10 minutes, we were hot, bothered and not ready to paint. So with our short class, we each took our turn playing the Clean Up Drums instead. More on the Monet Dress here. Many years ago, my husband scored me a drum set for my art room. I haven't pulled it out of the storage closet in a couple of years...but decided to this year. It's our Clean Up Drums...an incentive for awesome behavior. One student is picked at the end of class to play a fill. I teach all the kids how to play a fill so that when it's their turn to play, they'll know. On our first intro do, we each get our chance to learn and play a fill...it's a lot of fun. My fourth graders are gearing up to sew. Once class is stitching emoji pillows and they are SO EXCITED. I had to wear my needle felted emoji dress for the occasion. Teaching sewing means teaching good sewing habits. I created color coded sewing kits for each table. The kits include a color coded needle book (the felt piece with the button) and a color coded felt backed magnet for pins. I'll keep you posted on their progress! Another fourth grade class is stitching pizza pillows! So OF COURSE I managed to leave all of their supplies at home. SMH. They were great and the rolled with our alternative project instead...sewing next time! Third graders from Monday had a bonus art class on our half day Friday. I was excited to see the patterns they added to their plates in just 30 minutes! Since my younger students have really been focusing on line, I have been introducing them to the work of Kandinsky...which means I got to end my week on a Kandinsky note too. Hope y'all have a long and relaxing weekend!

Hey, friend! Well, I made it! One week down (with two of those days being PD and the rest being with the kiddos) and many more to go. I will officially see my artists on Monday...but even without the wee ones in art, this week still wore me out! On Monday, we had some professional development during the day. Our evening was our Meet the Teacher night where I thought my new shirt from Old Navy would be perfect. Normally, at the start of the school year, the halls are barren and drab. If you remember, my students painted this huge HUGE banner on field day. I saved it from that day and hung it right before school started. I added some Welcome Back banners to go above these giant paintings. They make me so happy and brighten our halls. Monday: Shirt is from Old Navy; necklace: J.Crew Kids; skirt is vintage from Etsy; shoes: TJMaxx; headband (seen in first photo) was created by a fellow art teacher! Every new year means trying new things. One thing I'm trying out this year is having a little mailbox for the kids to place their drawings and notes. Like most teachers, I get A LOT of fan mail...and while I love each and every one, it can eat up a lot of instructional time if I go through them during art class. I found this cute little mailbox at Joann's and my buddy Ali used her Cricket to bedazzle it for me. The idea is that the kids can place their drawings in there. I have a special place for notes and drawings called The Masterpiece Gallery. I'll keep you posted on how this goes! Tuesday: Sweater and headscarf: thrifted; necklace: The Paper Source; belt: Amazon; dress: Modcloth Tuesday was meant to be a work day and I felt like I got nothing done. I'm so glad that I put in my hours before most folks were in the building. I've noticed that I'm super social and love to go around and visit...and folks love to pop by and visit me. Since I was mostly prepped, it wasn't a problem. In years past, it always stressed me out and put me behind. So I guess there is something to that whole "planning ahead" thing. Wednesday was our first day back and it was a half day. No kids in art so that meant I had time to slap together a welcome back photo op (with the help of my music teacher friend Kiera!). We were pretty proud of our 5 minute backdrop making skills. I'm just glad I'm so good at hoarding fun finds from the Dollar Tree which is where the flora and fauna are from. Welcome Back Wednesday: I decided to join in on the photo op fun by dressing in my Crayon costume. Scored this bad boy from Amazon a couple years ago. Here's what I was wearing underneath: t-shirt: Forever21; belt: Amazon; watches: Swatch; necklace: made by me; skirt: thrifted Since the kiddos are coming on Monday, I've been prepping our table folders. This year, I decided to laminate them so we can use them over and again each six weeks. Details about them here. Nearly every year, for as long as I can remember, I've made a Back to Art Teacherin' Dress. The start of this school year has been just a little busy...and my focus has been on other things. I'm so bummed I didn't make the time to create a BTS dress! I've got so many ideas in my head...just not enough hours in my day. Details on this dress I created last year here. This was our first full day with kiddos. It's been our tradition for as long as I've been at my school, to pool all the kids into the Multi-purpose room and cover school rules, make introductions, talk about arrival, dismissal, lunch and so on. Last year, we got wise and made a video that covered nearly everything. It's a great way for us to make sure all kids get the basic school information that they need to be successful. I used to always cover my tables in paper....but it got to be too much of a waste of paper and my time. However, I do love to do it at the start of the year as there is no confusion what table the kiddos sit at. It also allows me to number the spots. I do give assigned seats...so being able to say, "Jimbo, you are Green Table #1" is so much easier when they are marked this way. Once the paper gets too gnarly for use, we'll pitch it and, hopefully, still remember our seats. Fri-yippie! My tables are prepped with our first day(s) activity and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Dress: made by me, details here; shoes: Chucks; belt and crinoline: Amazon! I love LOVE to do collaboratives as apart of our first days back and this year is no different. Details on this to come as I'm still working on those dirty little words: lesson plans. Hope y'all had a great week! Details on my Matisse-inspired necklace right here.

Howdy, friends! If you live in the Tennessee area than you know what a wet and wild week we had! I like to thought it was NEVER gonna stop raining. Which means to outdoor recess for the kids...and it was full moon week. Regardless, we were rockin' through our paintings, embroidery, weaving and sewing projects this week and I couldn't be more excited about the progress the kids are making. We also got to meet a new friend to the art room this week: Our Monster from Cotton Monster Jen! Last week, I had the chance to see my mom who had picked up for me some fun things for my art room: these floats! I'm using them as "flexible seating" for my third graders as they weave. They were in heaven. So that folks who wanted to sit in the floats could have a turn, I set a timer for every five minutes. I also have a small fort, beach chairs and plenty of pillows for them to pick from. We played music and it was a regular weaving party! If you'd like to learn more about circle loom weaving, check out my blog posts with video. Even if I did look like a crazy person walking down the halls with these bad boys. I literally couldn't fit through my door! Since my students are involved in fiber arts projects right now, I'm thrilled to introduce them to Jennifer Strunge. This isn't the first time I've shared her work with my kids. You can see our Monster Sewing Project (with video!) here. We are voting on his name next week after brainstorming tons of ideas! Will keep you posted. Another thing my mama got for me? This hilariously inappropriate and yet so appropriate t-shirt. The kids had a big laugh over that one. While my third graders are weaving, my fourth graders are sewing. Some are sewing pizza pillows, donut pillows or, in this case, emojis! I'm hoping to have these complete by this coming week...ready to move on, y'all! Lesson details to come. My first graders are wrapping up their reversible dot paintings. This is a revamp of a lesson I did years ago with my second graders...I love this project! I'll be creating an updated blog post about this and what we did differently super soon. I purchased the cardboard pizza rounds from Gordon Food Services but you can also found them on Amazon. Did y'all know I like rainbows? What was the first clue...? And pizza. I'm also a fan of pizza. This HUGE pillow was completed by a fourth grader. You can check out this lesson and video here. Two of my second grade classes are stitching right now...and totally rocking it. They finished them off this week and they were so proud of themselves. Lesson details to come. I love stitching with kids. I think the best part of this week was seeing so many projects finally coming to fruition. It's been WEEKS and I'm so excited for these young artists. I'm also STOKED that I got ALL of the Getting to Know You sculptures up because, whew!, that took a minute. And that's a wrap! I hope y'all had a wonderful week...and here's to one heading right for us! Ah! Also happy to finally finish and hang my Paint the Town by Numbers Mr. Rogers.

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Mondrian Monday: Ah, the day before the art show. Always 100% white-hot panic enduring. Thankfully my library buddy (hi, Barb!) offered to take my classes so I could spend the day unloading 400 clay projects from the kiln room and transforming the art room into a miniature gallery. She was a life-saver, I tell ya! Mondrian dress DIY: blog post here; shoes: from a friend Oh, hey! Look who said "I'll be right back on Wednesday with an art show blog post!" and then promptly when MIA. What can I say, I succumbed to pure exhaustion (even missing the end-of-the-school year party to collapse in bed at 7:30 on Thursday night). Not to mention, I didn't say which Wednesday I'd be talkin' at ya, did I? Lemme see if I can pull together that art show post this week. There's just so much to share I almost don't know where to start (including my secret recipe for hanging artwork that will NEVER HAVE IT FALL OF THE WALL AGAIN)! I'll be giving you a sneak peak in this here blog post. Another thing that's had me busy is my full blown attempted at declutterin' my life. I'm in it for realz this time, y'all. I'm reading this great book that I've told nearly everyone who will listen to me (which means I've told 5 people.) The book is The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Have any of y'all read it? Her whole theory is that you should only keep stuff that brings you joy. And she says you should start by decluttering your closets first. Y'all. Do you even KNOW how much clothing I have in my closets?! It's.In.Sane. In an attempt to declutter, make some cashola and share my amazing vintage finds with the universe, I've been spending the weekend snapping photos and uploading lovelies into my etsy shop: vintage domestic. I'll keep y'all posted on what other goodies I add in el shoppo. Oh! And I toooootally forgot to mention, I'm now on summer vacay! Hurray! Which means endless days of crafting and sewing whilst soaking up the summer sun are in my future, eeeee! Chat soon, y'all! I have a love of vintage clothing. Much of this clothing I'm selling are pieces I've been collecting since high school. Sadly, most have never been worn due to fit issues or simply the fact that I've no place to wear them. It's very hard for me to say goodbye but I know they'll go to someone who can truly appreciate them. Art Show Tuesday: My sweet mom drove 7 hours down from Indiana to attend my student's art show. She's done that a couple of times in the past, usually arriving early enough for me to put her to work. She wised up this visit...although I did have her help me bag and tag clay projects the following day. I'm one of those evil people that if you pop into my art room even for a moment, Ima put you to work, even if you are my mama! splatter paint dress: made by me, DIY here; sweater: Betsy Johnson; sandals: ooooold, Target Our annual art show is BANANAS, y'all. It was established well before I got there and it's always a packed house. I think we had well over 450 attendees with a school population under 400. We also provide free ice cream so that's a big draw: if you feed 'em ice creams, they will come. The Aftermath Wednesday: I felt like I'd survived a Great Wave after all that! My mom and I spent the day bagging and tagging clay projects with the teachers as they brought their kids to my room to collect their work. In my art show post, I'll 'splain to you just how I run the Big Fat Operation that is an Art Show. Great Wave dress: blog post here; sweater: Target The hubs was my super sweet photographer during the art show. He took a ton of snaps, can't wait to share them with you! More Me Made May Thursday: I really didn't think I'd have enough clothing to make it thru this month of me-mades but it turns out Ima have plenty. This little vintage hankie skirt I created ages ago after seeing on similar in Anthropologie for One.Million.Dollars. Or $100 which is pretty much the same in my checkbook. top: vintage, gift from a friend; skirt: made by me, here We had wall-to-wall clay projects on display in the art room. My second graders created those butterflies (we were on a butterfly roll, with this and that, what can I say?) and my third grade sculpted the flowers (complete lesson here). School's Out for the Summer Friday!: Oh, yeah, y'all. I'm ready! Although it came so fast and after so much stuff going down, it almost seems unreal. By the way, that skirt was created pre-blogging days! Twas my first (and currently last) article of clothing in which I stitched an invisible zipper! That's on my summer to-do list. top: I dunno, Target?; skirt: made by me with vintage and new fabric

First Day of Art, 2018! I had to wear this costume I scored from Amazon. Y'all, it's THE WORST COSTUME. If you follow me here, then you saw what a limp (ahem) paintbrush I had. I seriously had to clip a small hole in the brush and insert a thin dowel rod into it. As for the palette, it is too small (it IS a kid's costume so there's that) and I'm not even sure if I'm wearing it right. No matter tho, the kids LOVED it! Happy first week of school with kiddos to me! To celebrate, I thought I'd share my school photo from third grade. This is pre-glasses and pre-(much needed)braces. I'm obviously channeling the sister-wife look with my Holly Hobby get up (you 80's kids know the reference) and my long hair. Can you believe that blonde? I'd love to have that cornsilk hair again! My week back was filled these rules and routines and this Getting to Know You sculpture lesson. It was a super week back and I'm excited to start next week! For my older students, next week will be their second art class...for my littles, it will be their third and fourth. This coming week will be our last to work on our sculptures before each grade level dives into their start of the school year projects. Brace yourself, we are going to be doing some exciting things. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE YET. But I'm pretty sure they'll be exciting. I hope. And pray. Wore my Coloring Book Dress this week. It's crazy to think that the kiddos who colored most of this dress, who were in kindergarten at the time, are now in 3rd grade! I love wearing this dress and hearing them remember laying on this fabric while it was on the floor and coloring all over it. The fabric is from IKEA and we used fabric markers. I was super thrilled, humbled and excited to be featured in Scholastic Teacher's Cool Teachers feature. I'm far from cool but I was stoked that they think I am. Thank you so much, Scholastic! Each year, I try to make a Back to School Dress...and, sadly, this year, I totally dropped the ball. Why? What's wrong with me? Honestly, I think that summer went to fast and the school year started too soon. Can I get a do-over? When's fall break again? This one was made a couple years ago from a pattern I've not repeated. Those giant shoulder wing things were a one time deal. With all the kiddos doing sculptures my art room is quickly becoming a land mine of sculptures. I'm all WATCH YOUR STEP, PEOPLE to anyone who dares walk around my room. So I'm trying a couple new classroom management thingies this year and this is one of 'em. I plan to share my fave management techniques this week, right here, so stay tuned. For now, I'm just sharing a snapshot...any guesses how I plan to use this? I can't even explain the face other than I was born with it. This dress was created from my all time favorite IKEA fabric. A sweet art teacher sent me a remnant and I created a dress with every scrap! More details here. Mid-way through the week, I switched the background paper to black and I'm LOVING it. I plan to display these in a checkerboard pattern and I'm beyond excited. I have an ever-growing list of things I wanna do/try/work on/expand upon this year. Growth mindsets is at the top of my list. I'm re-reading The Growth Mindset Coach and loving it. This month, we've got a mantra to kick things off. I realized after wearing this dress that it's pretty much like Art Teacherin' Camo...I nearly blend right in with my art room. Also...if you know me at all, you know I don't love washing my hair. It takes time that I'd rather spend sleeping in! So on this particular morning, I decided to just do a half bun thing or...what I decided to dub... My Art Teacherin' Mullet: business in the front, party in the back. After getting to school, and seeing myself in the mirror, I realized I was channeling my inner Jonathan van Ness and okay with that! After a week of school (and MAYBE dealing with this!), Mitch and I took a quick trip down to Disney for their Not-So-Scary Halloween event. Halloween is our FAVORITE time of the year so we hit the parks a lot. It was so much fun and nice to get away for a hot minute. Back to reality tomorrow. I've got lots coming your way next week so be sure and pop back by!

Oh, Flowery Day!: I've already started the long-drawn out process of packing up my summer duds and replacing 'em with fall frocks (which I'll do all over again in two months when I pack up the fall clothing and bust out the winter stuff. The fun of being a clothing hoarder never ends. Sigh). Howevers, since we are learning about colorful Latin America, I wanted to dress the part one more week before saying adios to all my colorful clothes. dress and belt: thrifted; jacket: Lucky Brand; sandals: Frye; big fat hair flower: DIY And another photo because I just wanted you to see the back of this groovy jacket. I can't take credit for it but it's long inspired me to do the same to some snooze-fest sweaters in my closet. Well, hello there, kids! I dunno about you but these past coupla weeks have seemed to swallow me whole. By the time I get home from work, make some feeble attempt at cooking dinner (by the way, am I the only one that will occasionally [and by "occasionally", I mean once a week] have Pop Corn/Ice Cream dinners?) and kinda clean, up it's practically bedtime. Which is driving me crazy because my DIY mountain is piling up. My sewing room currently looks like a studio for a dozen different nut-job artsy types who lack direction and have seriously low standards of cleanliness. Which is pretty much how it always looks, dunno why I'm acting like that's anything new. Aside from all that slack-tasticness, I gotta tell ya that my email inbox has been filling up with some super fantastic Costume Contest entries! Are y'all planning on dressing up as an artist or artwork? If so, don't forget to send your photos my way ([email protected]) to enter to win a feature here as well as spot in SchoolArts magazine! Looking forward to see your costume! In other news, I'll be speaking at Bowling Green State University Monday, October 6th! I'm excited to share with y'all how I use my (questionable) fashion sense as an inspiration for teaching. At least I think that's what I'll be sharing. Regardless, I'd love to see and meet you there! All that aside, I thought I'd share with you the start of some Latin American-inspired work that my students began this week. Last week, you saw our inspiration and now here's a sneak peak at our works-in-progress. What in the world are your kids doing in the art room this week? In first grade-ville, we're working on our Amate-inspired drawings of floral and fauna. After learning about Mexico, Amate paper and macaws, we were introduced to a lil Spanish by this guy: That's right, I totes upped my geeky art teacher game and used this giant macaw puppet to teach the kids Spanish as well as the primary colors (thanks, Folkmanis, for that wise choice of feathers!). I picked up this guy from amazon and the kids loved him. They were so excited to draw their own macaws after Manuel (his name) made his appearance. Warm/Cool Days of Fall: I never know how to dress when it comes to fall. Cool in the mornings, warm by noon, this weather is as moody as me. dress: thrifted; scarf: Urban Outfitters; belt: Anthro My second grade artists are working on collage landscapes with the arpilleras of Chile in mind. We worked for several days creating painted papers (inspired by one of my fave blogs, Painted Paper! Thanks, Laura!). Now that our land is complete, it's time to add some fun details. I'll keep you posted on these beauties. Florals and Frida: Did anyone else scoop up those Frida shirts that Forever 21 was selling? Did you know they have a "Artist Series"? They've featured the artwork of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat which is awesome. What's not so awesome is that it's usually crop tops and tube tops. Not exactly teacher attire. But I suppose they aren't expecting teachers to shop at a place called "Forever 21", now are they? Frida top: Forever 21; skirt and shoes: thrifted My third grade is getting ready to embark on one of my fave projects: Tree Weaving. This week they created their backgrounds. We learned how to mix three different values to create space in our landscape. The kids were allowed to use whatever colors they wanted for their paintings which meant some created deserts, fields or beaches. I can't wait to see how their woven tree looks in the foreground. Bird Brained Friday: Since my first graders were drawing birds, I thought a bird-themed dress would be appropriate. Not that it could compete with that bird puppet, lemme tell you. They were all, "cool dress, Stephens, now BRING OUT THE PUPPET!" Kids these days, I tell ya. sweater and dress: thrifted Lastly, we have my fourth graders Metepec suns. These kids used the same method that my third grade students did to create a three-dimensional face. Several kids are creating a sun/moon face (those are the unfinished ones). I borrowed heavily Denise Logan's book Dynamic Art Projects (great book, y'all. Check it.) but I'm planning on having the kids do a little something different for the rays of the sun. For that, you'll have to stay tuned. Until next time!

Hey, sweet friends! I hope your week was a wonderful one...mine started out so super amazing as I had a visitor all the way from Australia! Thank you so much, Belinda for hanging out with me and my students. They LOVED having you as much as I did! Nearly all of my students were painting this week, from kindergarten through third grade. This was great because it meant low prep for me (aside from the initial painting prep which, as you know, is time consuming!). I love painting and I love teaching painting with my students. In fact, you can find out all about our supplies, set up and routines here! And, in case you are wondering, yes, my kids did draw all over this dress! Actually, they drew self portraits in the frames that was printed on this fabric and then I stitched it into a dress. You can find out more here. My third graders spent two art classes painting these large Chinet plates for their circle loom weaving project. On the first day, we reviewed painting routines and created concentric circles. On the second day, we painted patterns on our plates. These make me so stinkin' happy! I cannot wait to weave with these guys tomorrow! My latest new favorite thing: lidded ice cube trays. I found mine on the Walmart website but they are available in lots of places. The reason I love them: they gonna keep my paints from drying out. I've tried egg cartons and regular ice cube trays...but the paint always dries. Hoping these prove to be the solution. Since we are all painting, I thought wearing this dress would be the safest bet! Loved chatting with the kids about how I created it. Details here. My third graders are killlin' it with these plates and I'm so excited! I talk a lot about craftmanship in my art room...and you can read about that here. Kindergarten hopping on the Kandinsky train with these smaller cardboard circles they are painting for Dot Day. We totally didn't make the Dot Day deadline...and that's okay with me. These are so sweet! So I'm doing something crazy: I'm doing two different weaving lessons with my third graders! While one group is circle loom weaving, another is tree weaving. Before we could paint a landscape on our plates, we had to create two landscape painting sketches. These turned out so stinkin' pretty! Proper blog post on these to come...they will def be framed and featured in the halls soon! My first graders completed their HUGE 14" dots this week! I adapted a lesson that I shared here. On the reverse, we'll be doing something different than the blog post...I'll keep you posted. We will be hanging these like mobiles and I'm so stoked to see them up! Another day of painting, another painted dress by me. After creating their two small painting sketches, my third graders had to pick their favorite to paint on their plate. I'll keep you posted on how their tree weaving goes! YOU GUYS. LIKE, WHY?! I got a ton of questions on painting with children this week. So I did a blog post and have a podcast dropping later this week on this very topic! Check out my new art teacherin' tool belt! Chrissie makes them CUSTOM to your interests! I love mine. You can find out more about Chrissie and her designs here. FINALLY getting our Getting to Know You sculptures up. I meant to go in to school on Sunday and knock it out...no dice. Did y'all celebrate Dot Day? We did...we just didn't get everything up in time. Or AT ALL...and that's okay. I'm excited to see everything complete and on display. I cannot wait to share with you my sweet second grader's embroidery lesson. Stay tuned!

Maniac Monday: Some crazy man (aka Ginger Jesus) decided to photobomb my outfit posts this week. During my first photo attempt, I was outside snapping pics. When I scrolled through the photos, I noticed that SOMEBODY was in the background pressing his large white belly against the glass window. So I decided to snap some pics inside and he found his way into this picture. I'd say he should do a daily What Ginger Jesus Wore but it would just be a repeat of the previous days as this dude is always in head-to-toe brown. If ever I have to file a Missing Persons it will be "Sasquatch Man Last Seen in Brown". on me, top: garage sale; skirt: etsy; shoes: Target, last season; bangles: gifts; palette hair clip: made by me. On hubs: t-shirt: army surplus; shorts: thrifted Well, hello friends! I'm proud to say that I made it through my first full week back in Art Teacherin' Land! It was a super fun week and I can't wait to share with y'all what we've been up to. Howeves, if I learned one thang this week it's that I have to let go of my late nightin' ways. No more hitting the hay at 11pm only to rise and shine at 5am. Cuz ain't nobody shinin' when they crawl outta bed looking like a drunken zombie. So! Lesson learned. This week my new bedtime is 10:59pm. Speakin' of this week, I'm super excited to announce that the Apron Sew-Along starts this coming week! Yippie! So many of you all have shared your fab fabric choices and I cannot wait the finished results. In this first week's Apron Sew-Along post, I'll share with you how to create your own pattern, cut your fabric, stitch a pocket and attach that bad boy to your apron! You can follow along with me if you wanna or create an apron design all your own. I'd love it if you'd join the Apron Sew-Along page and share your progress with the rest of us. In this here post, along with my Back-to-School attire, I thought I'd give you a sneak peak of our first couple of days in art class and just what we've been working on. Teacher buds, did any of y'all head back this week? What are your lil artists creating? More deets on this projects soon. In the meantime, have a great week and I'll see you at the Apron Sew-Along! Have y'all heard of International Dot Day? It's a celebration based around the Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot. This book is a fantastic beginning-of-the-school-year book as it celebrates a young artist who once thought she was not. International Dot Day is September 15th and kids all across the globe are creating dots in celebration. We celebrated last year and got a great response from both the kids and adults. So we're back at it again this year. I'd love to hear if you and your student are celebrating and what they are creating in honor of Dot Day. My first grade kids started painting during their first week of art. No sense wasting any time, right? These guys painted many a masterpiece in kindergarten so we didn't have to use too much time chatting about painting dos and don'ts. That totes had this. Instead we painted about our artist inspiration: Wassily Kandinsky and made concentric circles, aka circles that hug each other! More on what is to become of these paintings soon. Cat's Butt Tuesday: If it's not the hubs doin' the photobombin', it's the cat. Here she is showing you her better side. top, shoes and skirt: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing In second grade land, we are making reversible paintings on pizza rounds. I know, right?! I decided that we'd also use Kandinsky as our inspiration and remembered there being a REVERSIBLE KANDINSKY painting featured in the movie Six Degrees of Separation. And I was all I'M A GENIUS! Check out this clip: Guess what I learned after doin' a wee bit of homework? Kandinsky never painted a reversible painting. GAH, what?! A movie LIED to me?! What'll I find out next, that there is no Wizard of Oz?! Aw, well. We're still making reversible paintings. Humph. Kindergarten Wednesday: We had an invasion of the littles on Wednesday. I had two 45 minute classes of the just-turned-five-10-minutes-ago set and they were amazing! Seriously! We took a tour of the art room, learned the Word of the Day (deets to come), found that we are artists and that we were gonna create a sculpture! What I love about these little guys is their enthusiasm. It's like pure joy. I wish I could bottle it. Like, seriously, sometimes, I wish I COULD bottle it and put a cork in it but on this day, it was precious. sweater: thrifted; heart top: Target, last season; skirt and shoes: Anthropologie Every the kids heard the word of the day, which was artist, we all gave a "whoop-whoop!". We took a ride on the art train, chugged around the room admiring everyone's sculptures and proclaimed each kid to be an artist...after which they received a "whoop-whoop!". Trust me, after 45 minutes of "whoop-whoop!" was I just about whooped out. Er, wiped out. Whatever. The base for our sculptures were, you guessed it, a dot! Thursday!: Did I tell y'all that I now have my 3rd and 4th for an hour after YEARS of 30 minutes?! You guys, it was amazing! In one fourth grade class we learned our word of the week, chatted about Kandinsky, played instruments, danced, painted, SPLATTER painted, cleaned up, read a book, played a game. Seriously. Every time I looked at the clock I was like, wait, we have more time! skirt, shoes and top: thrifted Y'all aren't gonna believe this but I got all sorts of techie this week. Suriously. I showed a couple of Prezis (so fast, fun and easy to create! I use the art gallery template), played music via Pandora (after I complained that my CD player was broken, a 3rd grader said, "um, use your computer!" Duh.) and I made these super fun signs on recitethis.com. Y'all gotta check that out, it's the jam. Fried-Day: Totes. I ain't used to this 5 days a week biznatch! Time to up the b-vitamin/caffeine/sugary-cereal intake. art supplies blouse: DIY here; pencil-y skirt: DIY here Oh, well, lookie here. Don't worry, this didn't happen in the art room but in our kitchen on Saturday morning. I had this grand idea that I'd bake banana bread even though 1. I don't bake, I start fires (obviously) and 2. I don't even like banana bread all that much. Especially when it looks like chewed-up-spit-out meatloaf (which meatloaf already looks chewed up and spit out but I digress). When I opened the oven the flames were actually huge. I quickly closed the door and ran for my camera. As I ran by hubs who had this "what's that smell?! why are you running?!" look on his face I told him, "I know you smell smoke but don't worry. It's just breakfast. And the fire is self-contained". Looks like you'll never have to worry about finding any cooking posts on this hear blog, eh? I'll just stick with the stitchin' and teachin', thank ya vury much. Until next time, get that apron fabric ready, kids! And we'll chat soon.

Happy International Dot Day, y'all! I thought I'd share with you what my students created for International Dot Day in this here What I Wore post because I'm so stinkin' excited! My lil artist friends have worked so hard for weeks on these masterpieces (I've shared a sneak peak here and last year's Dot Day here)...and their art teacher (um, that'd be me, speaking in third person like a true crazy) just barely got everything up in time for Thursday's Open House. Over the next coupla weeks, I'll post the complete dotty lessons starting with that Dots-turned-Flower-Garden mural that my sweet first grade artist created as it's my personal fave. Or was it the stitched dots by fourth grade? Maybe the metal dots by third...? Oh, I can't decide, I just loves 'em all! This week our Word of the Week was inspire and our Artist Inspiration was the author of The Dot, Peter H. Reynolds. We chatted about how The Dot has inspired artists all over the world to "create a mark and see where it takes you". The kids and I talked about how their dots can now inspire others throughout our school. It was so fun to hear them encourage each other and drop the "i" bomb (that'd be "inspire") as they know that anytime anyone says the Word of the Week, everyone says "Whoop! Whoop!" In other non-dotty news, I've got a ton of beautiful ladies who've made beautiful aprons to share with you this week! The Apron Sew-Along was so fun that I've come up with another sewing project for those interested...so stay tuned, y'all. Until then, lemme show you something Dot-tastic! Lemme introduce to you the Kindergarten dot! With kindergarten, I always start the school year with a construction paper line sculpture (you can read all about my kindergarten unit on line here, if you wanna). Instead of giving the kids rectangular construction paper, I simply gave them either a black or white pre-cut (shutter if you like, it was our first day in art. We'll cut more later.) dot and let 'em have at it. Our Word of the Week that first week of school was artist. So after our 45 minute art class, we hoped on the Art Train (um, just a long line of kids that chugga-chugga-chuggas to each table). I held up each kid-created sculpture and would say, "Wow! Morgan is an artist!" to which everyone gave her a Whoop! Whoop! There wasn't a single kid not beaming before they left the art room. Now, you know, kindergarten is notorious for touching the walls. These have stayed unharmed...and I do believe it's because they created them! Totally Dotty Tuesday: Lookin' back on What I Wore for Dot Week last year...I gotta say I did several repeats. Tis okay. Don't nobody need to know...unless I tell em in a blog post. Der. sweater: thrifted; dress: vintage; belt: Target; sandals: Anthro My first graders are so proud of their mural! They've seen the fourth grader's Warhol Soup Cans and the third grader's Magritte mural so they were ready to create one of their own. So I took down The Great Wave that was still hanging outside my door from last school year's Asian adventure and replaced it with these lovelies. I feel like I'm taking a trip down Candy Cane Lane every day when walking in the art room door! Y'all might recall from my previous posts that the kids were learning about Kandinsky's concentric circles. After being inspired by that piece, we turned our attention to his other paintings that involve line like Composition VIII. The following art class, we made textured and stamped papers... and used those to create our flower petals! Like I said, more details to come this upcoming week! Not trying to be vague...but I don't wanna spoil all the fun. The kids also painted many sheets of line and shape patterned papers for the mural. They informed me that they loved painting on those big sheets o' paper the very best. Squiggly Lines and Dots Wednesday: The temps here have been slowly dropping so much so that I'm currently sitting in a sweater and wearing tights. TIGHTS! I'm so afraid to pack up summer duds this early because it was only a week ago that we were still trapped in the 90's. Not the decade, the temps. Did I really need to clarify for you? Sorry. sweater: Forever 21, old; dress and belt: Target So last year, all the kids had a coffee filter dot hanging in the window. It was the first time I'd hung art in the window (what took me so long?!) and it was a huge hit. This year, I picked up a buncha pizza rounds that were white on one side. I painted the other side black (to remove one useless step for my mere 30 minute classes)... And we talked about Kandinsky again. Which is totes perfect for my second grade friends as they are the grade level I'm taking to see the big ole Kandinsky exhibit that's coming to our local art museum The Frist. We looked at Kandinsky's painting Several Circles and our word of the week was creative. I challenged the kids to only paint dots or circles on this side of the board. We chatted how we'd have to be super creative with such a constraint and they totally nailed it. I love this dotty painting. On the reverse, we chatted about line and went crazy creating a line design in black ink. The following art classes we added color. I love how they rotate in the window so both sides of the painting are visible. These kids had Double Dot Duty! Open House Thursday: I still can't believe it's all up -- all 400 plus kids works of art. I really liked having a deadline to get all the work up and I think I might set that as a goal in the future. It forced me and the kids to really hop to it. AND I also snapped photos of (most) works of art and a super mom uploaded 'em all onto Artsonia for me! Yay, I'm thrilled! You can see them here. art supply blouse: DIY here; pencil skirt: DIY here; pencil shoes: DIY here My super third graders created these foil relief sculpture dots. I'm currently obsessed with Sharpie on aluminum foil (we've seen it before...and yet it never gets old!). I'm plotting a project for my fourth grade using a similar technique. But we couldn't just leave 'em be. Oh no, we had to dot-afy the frame as well. ESPECIALLY when metallic markers are thrown into the mix. Then the kids were unstoppable. Or, rather, undotable! They even wanted to sign their name like "Peter H. Reynolds" which totally cracked me up. Exhausted but Standing, Friday: Not gonna lie, after a long day (and night) at school on Thursday, I was super pooped. But it was a good, big-sigh-of-relief kind of tired. This weekend is gonna involve lots of chill-axing. And not much else. top, skirt, shoes: thrifted Here's a peak at what the final display of all my fourth grades stitched art looked like together. I paper clip chained them like I did the second grade paintings. I like the way the look all together like some sort of groovy stitched string art quilt. You can see the complete lesson on this string artiness here. I had one class finish their's off the very day of Open House. That didn't stress me out. Oh nooooooo. Not. At. Alllllll. And there you have it! Happy International Dot Day, everyone! I can't wait to hear all about what you and your students have created for the occasion!

Feelin' Funky Monday: I wish I'd snapped a better photo of this skirt because it's straight up amazing. I scooped it up at the super fantastic etsy store SassySenoritaVintage (great shop, awesome seller!). It's completely hand appliquéd and so detailed. After receiving it, I thought I'd try my hand at the same appliqué method only to find that it's super intense! That's a DIY that might take a while. top and necklace: Anthro, gift from a friend; skirt: vintage, SassySenoritaVintage; shoes: last season, Payless Hey there, all y'all! Unlike last week when I wrote this post, this week zipped by at the speed of light. And it's kinda freakin' me out to think that we'll be in September before we know it. So much art making to do, always so little time! Story of every art teacher's life. This week I thought I'd share with you a lil sneak peak of our dot-inspired projects for International Dot Day! At first it was kinda tough coming up with dot-esque projects...and now I can't STOP coming up with ideas! I'm trying to force myself to save 'em for next year. I mean, we can't have every project this year be based around a dot...or can we?! I'll share the complete deets on these projects when the kids have completed 'em. In other news: I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THE APRON SEW-ALONG! I've loved seeing everyone's creations thus far (some of you have even finished your aprons, you over-achievers!), it's been so inspiring and super fun. If you wanna join along and see what's peeps be making, go here. This week, I'll share with you how to finish that apron off. Then I HAVE A SURPRISE in store for those of you that complete your apron! But you'll have to wait for the final apron-sewing installment to find that out, eee! Also, can I just tell y'all how much I've loved hearing your stories of childhood memories that built the brick sh## house you are today?! I'm so inspired, happy, motivated-to-be-that-person-in-a-child's-life that you just don't know. You can still leave your story and be entered to win a Spiral Art Kit by August 31st. Looking forward to hearing from you! Finally, can we talk about the neglected elephant in the room: The Artsy Book Club? This week I'm gonna show y'all the influence the Teach like a Pirate book has had on my first couple of days/weeks in the art room. I've tweaked routine/lessons/song-and-dance a little bit and I'm looking forward to sharing with ya what's worked and what needs more work, if ya know what I mean. Alrightie, kids! I'll be back soon with more apron-age, a visit to my art room and a brand new DIY (er, finally! It seems I got a little distracted by Orange is the New Black marathons. My bad.). Chat soon! Second Grade Reversible Abstract Paintings: I'll share the complete lesson with ya when these bad boys are finished. But for now, lemme give you the short version: listened to a variety of musical instruments (my gong, rain stick, and this thing called a spring drum that I'll share with you this upcoming week) and painted a variety of lines. Our influence was Kandinsky and how music influenced his work. Once the lines were painted, we've started adding color. Some kids have decided to also embellish further with pattern. I'm hoping by next week or so we'll be ready to start on the other side of this pizza round (purchased through School Specialty for $16/100 rounds). Tacklin' Tuesday: Sometimes I get the question: How do you stay clean in the art room?! Well, I usually don't. Nor do my students. We're almost always in aprons but there are the occasions where we forget, there's a paint spill and clothes receive an unfortunate makeover. I had a sweet first grade student spill paint who FREAKED because she thought her skin would be permanently stained ("I can't be paint splotchy for the rest of my life!"...y'all, I tried SO HARD not to laugh). I thought we'd cleaned up the entire spill when a third grader came up to me later with the very same paint on her skirt (there'd been a blob hiding on the table, just waiting to attack). I felt so bad! But the next day, she came in with a bag of chocolates for me and a kind note from her mother telling me that "this happens, no worries." Gah! Such kindness. And chocolate! top and shoes: thrifted; skirt and necklace: Anthro First Grade Concentric Circles and Radial Designs: For the dots in first grade, the kids painted their plates with a concentric pattern and then added detail in tiny brushes with black ink. Once complete, we created those painted papers (one side textured the other side dot-stamped) which we'll use to enhance our plates. This is gonna be for a great big hairy group project that I just can't wait to show you! Deets to come, y'all. Dang! Can you believe some of that detailed first grade painting?! I mean, these kids are 5 years old, y'all! Maxi Wednesday: This is my Art Teacher from the 1970's ensemble. You like? I'm into this whole bright color/ethnic pattern thing that I'm seeing everywhere and it's totes influencing my outfit choices. dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Sparkly Relief Dots by Third Grade: So my third grade kids cut out a circle from a styro plate and then added smaller styro circles on top of that. Once complete, we hit it with some spray glue, covered it with foil and they went to town creating their designs. They're kinda like round zen-tangles. I really like how they are turning out...but I'm uncertain just who we'll present these to the world. I'd love to hear your thoughts...should we simply mount them on a piece of construction paper? Maybe continue the line design on that background paper? Or perhaps create a design on the reverse and hang them mobile style? I'd truly love some input, y'all! Thursday, Already?: This week seemed to zip right by for me. And next week will be the same as we have a half day on Friday and Monday off. Then, it will be SEPTEMBER! How in the world did that happen?! dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Because I love them so and didn't think the first photo did 'em justice, I thought I'd share some close ups. String Art in Fourth Grade Land: When I was in fifth grade, we did this really fun string art project that I still have. I thought it was the best thing ever...and decided that my fourth grade should experience that fun-ness too. So we've spent the last couple of art classes decorating our boards (with a lil texture combin' and splatter paintin...since I was an 80's child, splatter paint seemed appropriate). The kids also had to start punching the correct amount of holes into the board and practicing their design ideas. Their fingers are itching to start stitching...and I'm excited to say we'll begin next week! A Friday with Balls: Holy crap, when I saw this crazy ballsy outfit at Anthropologie recently, I knew I had to have it in my life. Of course, I waited around until the sucker was on double markdown (I just cannot stomach purchasing full price in that joint or even first markdown for that matter). I did learn something interesting with this purchase: if they don't have your size in the store but have it online, you can purchase it in the store and they'll ship it FOR FREE to your house. Which saved me like $10 in shipping. everything: Anthro Speaking of shipping, there was some serious happiness in my mailbox this week! Artist and art teacher Daniel Langhans sent me those awesome CareBear stickers along with that rad card...and that envelope! You can find more of Daniel's awesomeness here: TiltedEarthStudios.com. I can't wait to enlarger that envelope on the copier and make it into a sign for my art room! And another art teacher buddy of mine sent me this gems she'd recently printed (Kelly, I LOVE THEM!). You can find handmade items by Kelly here: etsy.com/shop/jkmartinstudios. These prints totally put me in the mood for my fave holiday. I already have a place for them on the wall in our living room, I just need to get them framed. Funny thing is, both these awesome artists are from Arizona! Thanks guys!!

I need y'all to say a lil prayer for me...as we are heading into a FULL week next week! That's right. While some of y'all teacherin' friends work a partial week, we are in it to win it, truckin' all the way until 10am on Friday morning. If I make it if the kids make it that long. Every last one of us is runnin' on fumes and hot chocolate at this point. BUT...we still makin' some masterpieces! None of which I've had two seconds to blog about...so that's super awesome. My goal is to post a bunch of winter-themed lessons on this here blog super soon. AND I do believe I've been saying that for months but things have been cray around here. I'm inching closer to being finished with my new book (preorder here, eep!!) and having some time to actually create and catch up on this here blog is quickly becoming a reality. I'm so happy for it! In the meantime, if you follow me on IG, then you've seen a lotta these lessons already. I've even shared the details in my stories. But the plan is to create real live videos for you to share with your kiddos over my break. So...stay tuned. One project I'm stoked to share are these here super cute first grade penguins. The kids and I are loving this lesson and learning so much! Bingo daubers were used for both this lesson and the third grade abstract name design shown above. Since kindergarten is wrapping up their snowmen this week, I had to wear this here snowman dress, right? I found it on Amazon and it was both inexpensive and super cute, if I do say so. And I just did. But not as cute as these guys... These were all lookin' pretty adorable but adding the chalk around the edge and to the cheeks totally took it to another level. That night, my good buddy Tamara hosted a craft night...and I made this cute lil toy soldier! She is the most amazing host. We had a wonderful dinner WHILE creating. Thankfully she had the templates for the solider all cut out so it was just a matter of picking my colors, tracing and cutting. She even had a frame for each one of us. I was pretty excited to finish...and have him match my bonus room so well. Another week, another tree skirt. It's the most tree skirtin'est time of the year! These second grade chalked background for an upcoming Wolf Kahn-inspired landscape has me really excited. Yet another lesson to share with y'all soon! I have found that all the shops have the best tacky holiday sweaters right now! Target is where I scored this lil number and I love it. Speakin' of love, that's what I feel when I stare at these fourth grade beauties. Stay tuned on this one, we'll soon be adding these to our snow globes. And would you look at that! We got all fancy for our nephew's wedding this weekend and I just had to share...we clean up pretty good.

Red Monday: Please pardon the completely distracting and slightly messy background. Because, according to the background, if you do not there will be consequences. And I don't think you want to experience A Long Time Out. dress: picked up at one of the lovely vintage shops in Amsterdam this summer; shoes: Dolls by Nina; belt and bow: made by me. Holy Moly Me-O-My, thank goodness for a long weekend. I am currently doing my favorite things: chillin' with the hubs, catching up on sewing projects, celebrating with friends (check out my friend Zach's big accomplishment!)and day dreaming about what the little artists will be creating next week. I couldn't ask for a more perfect end to a very colorful week. Why so colorful, you ask? Well, to help the lil kindergarteners learn their colors, my school wore different colors for each day of the week. In addition to my monochromatic duds, I've added some of my most pinteresting pins. All of this color got me thinking about my favorite colors. I never really thought about what color I was drawn to until I started my attempts at decorating. It seems I love a very specific slightly-greenish sky blue. Surely there's a better name for the color. I've got it everywhere: in the painting I created in our front room (seen in the background of this post), in the rug I'm hooking, in the countless pillows. And now that I think about it, that was the color of my bedroom growing up. Surprisingly, that color is not very present in my wardrobe. There I have a lot of reds and pinks. How about you? What color do you find yourself most drawn to? Do you know why you have such a connection to the color? I'd love to hear your colorful comments! Woman in red Christian Dior dress, courtesy of pinterest. Yellow Tuesday: I have to say, colors really do evoke emotion. Seeing all my kindergarten friends in their bright sunny yellows really made me quite happy. dress: Buffalo Exchange; shoes: vintage, thrifted; hair flower: made by me Do you know the artist Raphael Soyer? I love his work. He's considered something called a Social Realist which is just fancy talk that means he liked to paint people living their lives. Doing what they do. Raphael had two brothers, Issac and Moses, who were also artists. Blue Wednesday: I've really taken to wearing these waist aprons during art class. I have a small mountain of vintage ones that I wear in rotation. This one's pretty groovy because it's just translucent enough that you can see the floral pattern. dress and apron: vintage; shoes: Anthro, coupla years ago Abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler in her studio. Green Thursday: On this day, one of my new students said, "You are like a wacky work of art everyday." dress: vintage, thrifted; shoes: thrifted and DIY'ed by me here. I am currently fascinated with the idea of creating my own fabric. I've had my nose stuck in my favorite fabric design books like Marimekko. I need to jump on this idea because that little voice that likes to convince me that my ideas are foolish is starting to get to me. Do you have little voices that try to talk you down from ledges? So annoying, I just wanna jump head first! Orange Friday: More like Sherbert Friday but whatever. Turns out I don't have a lot of orange in my closet. So sad, I love the color! dress: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pinky Otto, NYC; shoes: Anthro And I'll leave you with this orangie goodness. Enjoy your long weekend!

Monday, Let's Do This: Oh, I was so ready on Monday. I had my To-Do List scrawled in Sharpie on my hand (ever wonder why my hands are mysteriously hidden in my photos? cat's outta the bag) and I was ready to get the Art Show finished up in time for the big night. crayon dress: made by me, DIY here; sweater: Betsy Johnson, picked up at Buffalo Exchange; shoes: BC, super old; palette pin: gift from a friend (thank you, Paul!) Ya'll are gonna have to forgive my absence. This past week was our annual art show and I was doin' some serious time at the joint. From framing, to loading and unloading the kiln (up until the actual day of the show, ack!) to finally finishing the mural that'd been on my floor for, gulp, a month (okay, more like two months), the To Do List was seemingly unending. I did end up letting some stuff go (Let it go, let it go; Can't frame one more thing anymore; Let it go, it go; Turn away and slam that art room door) which made it so I could actually leave the school and see that man who lives in my house and eats my chocolate. I thought I'd share with ya'll just a teeny tiny sneak peak of our art show. We had a turn out of well over 400 folks (I only know this because they ordered 400 cups of ice cream to pass out for our Ice Cream Social and they ran out half way through the night!). The evening went by in a blink and left me totally pooped...but in a good way. Be warned: many photo-heavy art show posts to come. Oh! And I'm a wee bit behind on sharing art lessons with you but I'll be catching up on those soon (hello, summertime!). AND, lastly, can ya'll believe this here is my 100th What the Art Teacher Wore post?! I just traveled back in blog time to find my very first weekly outfit post. I didn't have the title nailed down yet (I called it "What NOT to Wear" for the longest time!) but I've completely enjoyed sharing my outfits with you. However, if you have any thoughts or suggestions on this weekly post, I'd love to hear 'em! Until then, have a great week (it's our last one!) and I'll be back with ya'll soon! I don't believe I've ever shared this mural that my student teacher, the kids and I created this year! We always make a new one for the front lobby and this one was a mammoth. With a photo of every child in the school, it was a beast to assemble. I'll share with you the details in an upcoming blog post. Rainy Tuesday: For some reason, the weather this week took a turn for the chilly worst. Temps dropped from the 80's to the 50's which had me propping open that kiln lid and warming my hands. dress: thrifted, vintage; sweater: ebay; boots: Hunger; bows: H & M; belt: from another dress Just a peak at some a kindergarten display. I've written about most of these lessons: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus painting and A Unit on Line. I'll be sharing a lesson on those clay butterflies later this week. Clean Your Room! Wednesday: Gah, up until the day before the art show, those kids were still creating paintings (that I ended up hanging the day of the show! I was like a monster: Must. Hang. EVERYTHING.) That afternoon, I spent hours putting everything away (all my closets currently look like an episode of Hoarders) and prepping my room for the big day. dress: old, Anthropologie; sweater and shoes: thrifted; tights: Target; bow belt: made by me My art room used to be the school library. When they remodeled years ago, the wall to wall shelving became wall to wall cabinets. I know, I'm spoiled rotten. Usually my counters are covered in bottles of paint, brushes to be washed, construction paper, you name it. All that got put away and I covered the counter in paper to display clay projects. Extra Panda Paintings, as well as Ice Cream paintings (in honor of the Ice Cream Social) were hung on the cabinets. Okay, ya'll. The kids made awesome Asian-inspired clay pieces this year...but my favorite lesson is gonna have to be these ceramic Painted Elephants of India by my fourth grade students. Each one is clever, unique and amazing. Lesson to come. Art Show Thursday!: Even my toes are excited. My administration is The Very Best. They allow me to get a substitute teacher on this day so I can finish hanging artwork and prepping clay displays. I got this idea from another art teacher years ago...and it's simply genius. It also allowed me time to take our school's superintendent as well as the board members around the show. I think it's crucial to inform everyone of the importance of art education. Job security, people. blouse: garage sale; skirt: etsy; sandals: Target; necklace: The Paper Source Alright, ya'll. As much as I LOVE murals, I really hate putting them together as it usually involves me crawling around on the floor with a hot glue gun with a tail of two bright orange, extra long extension cords attached. But the end result is worth it, says me. I got the idea to make this mural light up after creating my Starry Night Light Up Dress and based the theme off of this Winter Wonderland Mural the kids created a couple years ago. Finally Full-Day Friday!: I seriously cannot believe my school year is this close to being over. I'm very sad I didn't get to cover everything that I would have liked...which leads me to believe that I need to work on my school year planning skillz. It's on my Summertime To Do. sweater: super sale, Anthropologie; picture frame dress: Modcloth; tights: Target; shoes: Fluevog On Wednesday afternoon, as I was clearing the tables for the art show, I found this graffiti on one of my tables. I have an idea who wrote it...my fourth grade students, whom I'm taught since kindergarten, have been very sentimental these last couple of weeks. I'm going to miss them so much...and I think they are feeling the same. Another clay project fave of mine are these fourth grade pandas. The student on the left had created a clay umbrella but the weight of it caused it to fall over. Our solution was to add this drink umbrella once it was out of the kiln. These two pandas are just hilarious to me...it's kinda how I imagine hubs and I in just a matter of days. Summertime, here I come!

You know those flakey art teacher types that, although they've taught art for something close to 100 years, they still neglect to order art supplies until well into the school year? "Good heavens, no!", you say, "I don't know nor would I ever associate with any of those types of art teachers." Oh, but you do. Hello, my name is Cassie and I am Queen of the Flakey Art Teachers. Seriously. And I've got a glitter-encrusted crayon-crown to prove it (if I could only find the blasted thing). Why make this announcement in this here Dotted Relief Sculpture post? Because this project was born outta an empty art supply cupboard. In fact, I've rewritten a (disturbingly morbid, go here and read and tell me I'm lyin') children's poem just for the occasion. I've titled it Old Mutha Stephens: Old Mutha Stephens Opened her cupboard to be retrievin's Some paint, colored pencils and glue. But when she came there Her cupboard was bare! And so her students used foil and plates and didn't have a clue That their art teacher was a Big Crazy Unorganized Flake. (Okay, so that last bit is a work in profess, you'll have to forgive me). What's that? You too strive to be just as flakey as me and wish to dupe your student into thinking you just dreamed up the most awesome project on the planet? Oh, well then. You came to the right place. Get yourself to the nearest grocery store and grab the following: * Super cheapo styrofoam plates. You want the cheap ones because they cut much easier. Each kid will need two so go for the largest supply. * Spray Glue. I like 3M because it doesn't suck. * Cheapo aluminum foil. The thin stuff works great. * Sharpies in a lotta colors. * Glue. You know, like, Elmers or something. After reading The Dot, the kids traced a circle that was the size of the center of their styro plates. After cutting out two circles, they used one as the base for their relief sculpture. The other circle was used to trace bottle caps and cut out smaller circles. These were glued to the larger circle. After they had a minimum of three smaller circles with a maximum of two stacked on top, they visited me at a separate table where I hit their work with a shot of spray glue and slapped a piece of foil on top. They returned to their seats to "massage" the foil and reveal the circles underneath. The extra foil was cut away from the circle and tucked underneath. Then the fun of coloring designs in sharpies began... I gave the kids a zen-tangle-meets-circles idea sheet to get the ball, er dot, rolling. I'm a big believer in what we call "idea sheets" as I'm one of those artists that always needs ideas and never just has 'em pop into my lil head. For my wee artists that are the same, I provide idea sheets. The kids know that they are just ideas and they don't have to use them if they don't need 'em. After the first hour of work, their dots looked a lil like this. I loved 'em so but I just couldn't imagine them being hung like this. So the kids began working on dotted frames to mount them. Which were stamped with round stamps in white. The kids added color to the white dots with either paint or makers. Once those dried, they embellished their frames with Magical Metallic Markers (which are only "magical" because I told the kids I'd bought 'em just for them and that their nemesis, the fourth graders, had not used 'em yet. This got a lotta yesssss!es from the third grade crowd.) To mount 'em, the kids chose a colorful piece of paper that they thought enhanced their design. A larger circle was traced and their metal dot was glued atop. And that was then glued to their super groovy dot-erific frame. The kids all loved how Peter H. Reynolds signed his name with his middle initial and several of 'em followed suit. I'd say there's no dot, er doubt about it, these bad boys are dot-alicious (okay, okay, I'll stop. But I'm at the end of my post, just trying to bring it all together for ya!). Funny story: just this afternoon, my personal hero, our school bookkeeper, announced over my phone, "Mrs. Stephens! It's Christmas in the office, your supply order came in!" and wouldn't you know it, the kids cheered HURRAY! Looks like Mutha Stephens just hit the art teacherin' mutha load. Empty cupboards no more, yippie!

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Hey, friend! Well, I made it! One week down (with two of those days being PD and the rest being with the kiddos) and many more to go. I will officially see my artists on Monday...but even without the wee ones in art, this week still wore me out! On Monday, we had some professional development during the day. Our evening was our Meet the Teacher night where I thought my new shirt from Old Navy would be perfect. Normally, at the start of the school year, the halls are barren and drab. If you remember, my students painted this huge HUGE banner on field day. I saved it from that day and hung it right before school started. I added some Welcome Back banners to go above these giant paintings. They make me so happy and brighten our halls. Monday: Shirt is from Old Navy; necklace: J.Crew Kids; skirt is vintage from Etsy; shoes: TJMaxx; headband (seen in first photo) was created by a fellow art teacher! Every new year means trying new things. One thing I'm trying out this year is having a little mailbox for the kids to place their drawings and notes. Like most teachers, I get A LOT of fan mail...and while I love each and every one, it can eat up a lot of instructional time if I go through them during art class. I found this cute little mailbox at Joann's and my buddy Ali used her Cricket to bedazzle it for me. The idea is that the kids can place their drawings in there. I have a special place for notes and drawings called The Masterpiece Gallery. I'll keep you posted on how this goes! Tuesday: Sweater and headscarf: thrifted; necklace: The Paper Source; belt: Amazon; dress: Modcloth Tuesday was meant to be a work day and I felt like I got nothing done. I'm so glad that I put in my hours before most folks were in the building. I've noticed that I'm super social and love to go around and visit...and folks love to pop by and visit me. Since I was mostly prepped, it wasn't a problem. In years past, it always stressed me out and put me behind. So I guess there is something to that whole "planning ahead" thing. Wednesday was our first day back and it was a half day. No kids in art so that meant I had time to slap together a welcome back photo op (with the help of my music teacher friend Kiera!). We were pretty proud of our 5 minute backdrop making skills. I'm just glad I'm so good at hoarding fun finds from the Dollar Tree which is where the flora and fauna are from. Welcome Back Wednesday: I decided to join in on the photo op fun by dressing in my Crayon costume. Scored this bad boy from Amazon a couple years ago. Here's what I was wearing underneath: t-shirt: Forever21; belt: Amazon; watches: Swatch; necklace: made by me; skirt: thrifted Since the kiddos are coming on Monday, I've been prepping our table folders. This year, I decided to laminate them so we can use them over and again each six weeks. Details about them here. Nearly every year, for as long as I can remember, I've made a Back to Art Teacherin' Dress. The start of this school year has been just a little busy...and my focus has been on other things. I'm so bummed I didn't make the time to create a BTS dress! I've got so many ideas in my head...just not enough hours in my day. Details on this dress I created last year here. This was our first full day with kiddos. It's been our tradition for as long as I've been at my school, to pool all the kids into the Multi-purpose room and cover school rules, make introductions, talk about arrival, dismissal, lunch and so on. Last year, we got wise and made a video that covered nearly everything. It's a great way for us to make sure all kids get the basic school information that they need to be successful. I used to always cover my tables in paper....but it got to be too much of a waste of paper and my time. However, I do love to do it at the start of the year as there is no confusion what table the kiddos sit at. It also allows me to number the spots. I do give assigned seats...so being able to say, "Jimbo, you are Green Table #1" is so much easier when they are marked this way. Once the paper gets too gnarly for use, we'll pitch it and, hopefully, still remember our seats. Fri-yippie! My tables are prepped with our first day(s) activity and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Dress: made by me, details here; shoes: Chucks; belt and crinoline: Amazon! I love LOVE to do collaboratives as apart of our first days back and this year is no different. Details on this to come as I'm still working on those dirty little words: lesson plans. Hope y'all had a great week! Details on my Matisse-inspired necklace right here.

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Feelin' Frida-ish Monday: I have a coupla after school art clubs, in those small groups, we have the most enlightening convos. One girl asked, "We learn about men artists a lot. Aren't there any girl artists?" I had already been thinking about how I'd like to introduce more contemporary artists next year (this guy does it all the time and has me inspired) but now I know that more female artists need to be thrown into the mix. So! What contemporary/female artists do you introduce in your art room? dress: thrift store; necklaces: Forever39, ahem, 21; belt: Anthropologie; tights: Target; boots: Seychelles I don't know what life is like on your end of the world but I'm sure it's crazy-busy. Especially if you are a teacher. End-of-the-school-year projects to wrap up, mountains of artwork to sort for our school-wide art show, let's-get-rid-of-this-stuff spring cleaning, the list grows by the day. So this week, I thought I'd share with you just some of the things we've been working on in the art room. Complete lessons on this here blog to come, but for now, you'll have to savor these sneak-peaks. AND, just so's ya know, Wednesday, April 30th is the LAST CALL FOR THE BEST DRESSED ART TEACHER CONTEST! Yes, I'm shouting at you, that's how excited I am! So many of you awesome art teachers have sent me snaps that left me rolling in laughter (which is a good thing, I swear! Ya'll are the best!). What's the Best Dressed Art Teacher Contest, you ask? Well, here's the details: Nominate yourself or an art teacher buddy! Simply send an email to me at [email protected] with a photo of your best artsy look. High resolution photos preferred, please. Please include a short bio about the art teacher and what inspired the look. Photos and bio will be shared on this blog on April 30th. Open voting on this blog will end on May 5th and the winner will be announced May 7th! The winner will receive a magical prize along with an interview on this blog. So! what are you waiting for? Shoot me an email, you crazy art teacher, you! So if I'm not found Buried Alive under the 400+ clay projects that the kids have created over the last coupla weeks, it'll be a miracle. These clay stars were created a couple months back. Our original intent was to glaze them and "sell" them back to our parents with the proceeds going to charity. However, due to some personal stuff, that had to get placed on the back burner. But now we're back! And I just knew I'd never be able to get 400+ stars glazed and fired along with all those projects. So I lurked the interwebs for a possible solution and saw something about coloring clay projects with crayons...(well, construction paper crayons were recommended but, in the state that my room is currently in, there was no finding mine)... We painted over them with watercolor paint (I asked that the kids pick just one color, por favor) and viola! Colorful and completed in a snap! More details about these stars and how they were created in an upcoming post. Bump-It Up Tuesday: So I had a hair appointment after school on Tuesday (not that you'd ever be able to tell I got my hair cut. I'm such a chicken, I always just get a couple inches taken off. So boring!). Once seated in the hair-cuttin-hot-seat, I proceeded to unravel the following from my 'do: 11 Bobby Pins, 2 Pink Bows and 1 Extra Large Bumpit. My hair dressers reaction, after regaining her thoughts, "Ohmigawd, IS THAT A BUMPIT?!" I live in the South, ya'll! It's Big Hair or Die! shoes, sweater and top: thrift store; skirt and belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing Speaking of clay projects...my 3rd graders created these Chinese-inspired clay dragons. Ya'll, this project was such a hit! I would easily do this again with all grade levels. The creativity was off the chain crazy! I can't wait for them to glaze them so I can share the easy-peasy lesson with you. Some of my 4th grade students created Panda's with Personality (oh boy, ya'll. Do they ever have personality!) while another group created Asian elephants inspired by the painted elephants in India. Many added jewelry, fabric and flowers to their elephants. I have a feeling these are going to be the most colorful elephants ever. So Stinkin' Tired Wednesday: Seriously. The end of the school year is near...and my work load only builds as I'm sure yours does as well. This photo was the only one I managed NOT to be yawning my head off in. dress: vintage, thrifted; tights: Target; shoes: Dolls by Nina After finishing off our clay projects, We Returned to Our Normally Scheduled Program, Already in Progress (said in that officially dorky voice). Which means my 4th graders added either bamboo, cherry blossom trees or pine trees to their large (12" X 18") watercolor painted backgrounds. Lesson to come, promise! What is Wrong with You, Thursday?!: Wow, this outfit was a let down to the folks, both big and small, in my school! The 4th grade decided that they had never seen me in "short shoes" (um, I'm guessing that means flats?!) and my librarian buddy dubbed this a "too normal" of an outfit. Humph! Time to get outta these Short Shoes and step up my Non-Normal game, I guess! top: Target; skirt: vintage, etsy; shoes: gift; headband: made by me; necklace: The Paper Source Meanwhile, in 3rd grade, we excitedly finished these Ming vase inspired still lives. We spent a long time on this project but learned so much...I'll be sharing this lesson later this week. Stay tuned, ya'll! Hittin' the Town, Friday: Almost everyday after school, there's something going on. Whether it's an art club or meeting up with buddies, I'm always running. I had decided that, with art show approaching, I should spend more after school time in my art room...but I just can't! Not with buddies that I need to chat and shop with. Tamara, thank you for snapping this photo at my happy place -- Anthropologie (where I walked out with a not-at-all-necessary $298 dress for $26, eeee!). dress: made by me (go here for the craziest food-processing-foot-cutting story everrr) My 1st grade friends made clay koi fish...and while those dry, they are creating these koinobori (Japanese for Carp Kite) for May 5th which is Children's Day in Japan. I actually picked up these die-cut paper fish years ago through Roylco and never got around to having the kids create them. This time it worked to be the perfect tie-in, as well as a super short project while our clay drys out. I'll share with you more about this project soon. Ah! So much to share with ya's!

Hey there, friends! I come to you just as excited as this photo from Monday because...it's a three day weekend. Here's to staying in my pj's all weekend, watching The Office for the umpteenth time and working on all the projectzzzz. I hope you all are livin' it up and partyin' hard like me! To kick off the week, I wore my needle felted Kandinsky inspired dress to inspire my third graders as they started painting their plates for our Circle Loom Weaving unit. I've got several weaving videos on my YouTube channel if you are interested in bringing fibers to your art room. Just search my playlist Fibers! Many of my grades are kicking off the year with fiber arts projects like sewing, weaving and fiber applications. I'm so excited about that, here's just a peak. MANY more details to come, I pinkie swear! Of course, I share tons of sneak peeks here. On Tuesday I got all set to teach some of my classes about landscapes. They are getting ready to do my Tree Weaving project which means they gotta paint a landscape first. I was feeling all sorts of prepared. We partnered up and looked at the landscapes in those clear plastic sleeves. The kids had to work together to find the horizon line, the back-, middle- and foreground. It was a GREAT pre-assessment. Then we went over the vocabulary and corrected our mistakes. I chatted about scale, perspective and atmosphere. We were just getting ready to paint when the fire alarm went off. C'est la vie. After being outside for 10 minutes, we were hot, bothered and not ready to paint. So with our short class, we each took our turn playing the Clean Up Drums instead. More on the Monet Dress here. Many years ago, my husband scored me a drum set for my art room. I haven't pulled it out of the storage closet in a couple of years...but decided to this year. It's our Clean Up Drums...an incentive for awesome behavior. One student is picked at the end of class to play a fill. I teach all the kids how to play a fill so that when it's their turn to play, they'll know. On our first intro do, we each get our chance to learn and play a fill...it's a lot of fun. My fourth graders are gearing up to sew. Once class is stitching emoji pillows and they are SO EXCITED. I had to wear my needle felted emoji dress for the occasion. Teaching sewing means teaching good sewing habits. I created color coded sewing kits for each table. The kits include a color coded needle book (the felt piece with the button) and a color coded felt backed magnet for pins. I'll keep you posted on their progress! Another fourth grade class is stitching pizza pillows! So OF COURSE I managed to leave all of their supplies at home. SMH. They were great and the rolled with our alternative project instead...sewing next time! Third graders from Monday had a bonus art class on our half day Friday. I was excited to see the patterns they added to their plates in just 30 minutes! Since my younger students have really been focusing on line, I have been introducing them to the work of Kandinsky...which means I got to end my week on a Kandinsky note too. Hope y'all have a long and relaxing weekend!

More Me Made May-ness Monday: Could I fit any more M's into that intro? Me thinks not. blouse: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; skirt: Made by Me, details here Hey, friends! I hope your week was fantabulous. This coming week of mine not only includes the last week of school but also our school-wide art show (yes, I know that's crazy...no, I didn't plan it that way). I'll be certain to share all the details of the art show with y'all in a super photo heavy blog post this Wednesday. That'll prolly be the next time you hear from me as I'm certain to be buried under artwork until then. In this here post, I'll give y'all a sneak peak into what the kids have been creating in preparation for el art showness. Also, since it's #MeMadeMay, I'm still sporting something I created daily. I'll be sharing all of these MeMades in a big fat post at the end of the month. Please, try and curb your enthusiasm. Until Wednesday, kids, fingers crossed I can pull off this art show! Toodles! Being MeMadeMay and all, I decided to go with a vintage tape measure as a headband and a wee lil vintage sewing machine brooch. Dude at Starbucks: "Is that caution tape in your hair?! Cool!" (insert head-banging-on-wall emoji here). Man, I gotta let you in on a lil secret. During these last few days of school, let the kids work on murals. Throw a big fat sheet of paper on the tables, let them work in groups of their choice, crank up the music to drown out the sound of their voices (I kid! Kinda!), give 'em a theme and watch 'em go to town. Granted, I did have a total of four kids completely loose their minds and paint their hands (like, two painted their hands red, y'all. Yes, they were caught "red handed". Sigh.) but for the most part, we had a great time. These will be used as the back drop for our Village of Kindness. Deets to come but a sneak peak here. Back to School Dress Tuesday: I crafted this dress at the start of the school year. It seriously seems like yesterday. With all of our snow days (I think we had 10?), this year seemed to zip by! Any of you teachers out there feel the same? dress: blog post here; shoes: Anthro, gift from a friend (thanks, Rebecca!) A while back, a teacher buddy gave me these huge posters of white paper. The kids have been painting circle paintings on them as another part of our art show excitement. You'll notice that not only are we painting but glazing clay projects as well. Ah, the end of the school year. Nothing like that rush to get EVERY-THANG done. At the last minute. Dresses Made During Snow Days Wednesday: Are really the best dresses, aren't they? I managed to bust out a ton of dresses this winter because of all those days. That was lovely. Not having enough time to finish all the art projects that I'd dreamed to doing with the kids? Not so much. dress: details here, y'all; sandals: like, ancient. Target I had kindergarten-land for the very last time this past week. We had a Yay-Boo moment. Yay, we'll see each other next year! Boo, this is our last art class as kindergarteners. So, we made a Kinder-Garden! We drew flowers in black oil pastel then painted them with either warm or cold colors. Then we switched the script for the background. I thought they came out just lovely. And one more thing to hang for the art show, yay! It's Come to This...Flip-Flops Thursday: I started the week in heels and by the middle, I was done. I scored these fun flips in NOLA. Get this, they smell like flowers! They are from a brand called Melissa that makes scented shoes. I love them! I was smelling my feet all day. Don't judge. sweater and brooches: thrifted; dress: made by me! By the way, this blog post, if you dare to read it, is INSANE...here; flips: Melissa brand OH, this excitement happened this week! Our "Johnson Elementary has Heart" mural went up this week! If you follow me on insta-gram crackers, you have already seen this. Full blog post to come...but until then, here's the start of our process. I love how this cheers up our front office which was formally referred to as the DMV for it's lovely drabness. Last Year's Back to School Dress Friday: Can I just brag and say that I've already got NEXT year's B2S dress in the werkz? Das right! Even if my sewing room did look like this just 24 hours ago (scroll downeth. Then scroll back upeth cuz I'm not done jib-jabbin' yet). sweater: Betsy Johnson, found at Buffalo Exchange; dress: blerg post here So. Can we have an honest chat here for a moment. I know when you come to this blog, like most, I show you the nice, clean and sunny side of my life. But I really, like really-really, struggle with packrat-itis. I recently picked up the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and I'm really enjoying it. Bottom line: get rid of anything that does not bring you joy. Now, I find that hard to apply as an artist/art teacher because, well, you never know, you know? However, this weekend, I decided to attack my sewing room (btw, welcome to my sewing room, y'all!) and, kidz, I gotta tell you, it felt so good! I'll be filling up my etsy shop with goodies next weekend, taking a truck load to Goodwill and tossing the rest. Ah! I can't even tell you how good this feels! My new motto is: nothing on the floor and nothing up to the ceiling (yes, it was that bad). I'll have to give you a tour soon!

An elementary art teacher blog with art projects and lessons, DIY projects and outfit photos as well as clothing I have made myself.

Monday, Monday: top: vintage, gift from a friend; skirt: vintage, scooped up at Regal Retro; shoes: when am I not in these shoes? By Indigo by Clarks. I don't know what life has been like in your world this past week but mine has been crazy. Cruh-A-Zee. And the crazy doesn't appear to be slowin' down any time soon. Which I suppose is okay. Keeps me off the streets. Or off vintage shops on etsy which are equally as dangerous in my (pocket) book. So instead of showcasing art work or featuring an artist along with my outfits this week, I'm giving you a peak into my world. It should explain a lot. Or not. I'm too chuck-full-o-crazy to decide. Oh! and thank you for taking the time to vote and leave a comment about my latest dress alteration. I appreciate your thoughts...especially since they appear to be leaning in my direction. And if you've not made yourself heard, there's only two days left to vote. What are you waiting for? Chat with you soon! Holy French Painter! This skirt was meant to be mine. Such a perfect fit for this year's theme. Pack Your Bags Tuesday: This skirt came in so handy when chatting about luggage tags, suitcases and travel stickers. black tank: Target; sweater: Ann Taylor, thrifted; belt and shoes: Anthro; skirt: PastTimesVintage I shared with you a sneak peak of the kids' self-created passports here. Full lesson to come, I promise. I just knew the kids and their crazy art teacher would lose those little passports...so we've been creating these portfolio suitcases complete with a passport pocket! They have loved carrying them around the room and stamping their passports. We are almost ready to jet off to France! Wednesday: sweater: Target, years ago; belt: Anthro; beret: from a doll's hat, made by me; dress: gift from a friend, altered here; shoes: Indigo by Clarks In a feeble attempt to get my room ready for this coming week's Open House, I've been staying late into the afternoon. No biggie, I love it. I have missed my usual routine of catching up with friends in the afternoon though. So it was kinda funny that one of my "little friends" inscribed this message on my car window this week. I'm just glad it was done in lip gloss...not nail polish as I feared. I've yet to find the culprit. Picture Day Thursday: Last year the theme in the art room was Ancient Egypt. One week I dressed as King Tut. A month later, I spent the week dressed as Queen Nefertiti. It just so happened that Picture Day fell during Queen Nefertiti Week which resulted in the photo below. This year's theme isn't nearly as dramatic, but I did decide to go Parisian this Picture Day. beret: made by me; dress: bought in Germany; belt and shoes: you know...I am a repeat offender with these items!; scarf: vintage, thrifted My ID badge from last year. The photography folks were not happy with me when I sat down. The girl said: Take the hat off. I told her it didn't come off. She rolled her eyes and snapped this photo. You don't mess with Queen Nefertiti (or Never-Teetee as the kids and I took to calling her). Freaky Friday: We made it to Williamsburg, VA for the opening night of their Halloween event (they call it Howl-O-Scream) at Busch Gardens. We had a great time there and at Colonial Williamsburg. More details to come. And my dress was quite the hit! dress: Horror Flick Dress; my theme park shoes of choice: Chacos Being a huge fan of Hitchcock's The Birds, I loved the entrance of Howl-O-Scream. Super Spooky! So looking forward to more weekends of haunts.

Happy International Dot Day, y'all! I thought I'd share with you what my students created for International Dot Day in this here What I Wore post because I'm so stinkin' excited! My lil artist friends have worked so hard for weeks on these masterpieces (I've shared a sneak peak here and last year's Dot Day here)...and their art teacher (um, that'd be me, speaking in third person like a true crazy) just barely got everything up in time for Thursday's Open House. Over the next coupla weeks, I'll post the complete dotty lessons starting with that Dots-turned-Flower-Garden mural that my sweet first grade artist created as it's my personal fave. Or was it the stitched dots by fourth grade? Maybe the metal dots by third...? Oh, I can't decide, I just loves 'em all! This week our Word of the Week was inspire and our Artist Inspiration was the author of The Dot, Peter H. Reynolds. We chatted about how The Dot has inspired artists all over the world to "create a mark and see where it takes you". The kids and I talked about how their dots can now inspire others throughout our school. It was so fun to hear them encourage each other and drop the "i" bomb (that'd be "inspire") as they know that anytime anyone says the Word of the Week, everyone says "Whoop! Whoop!" In other non-dotty news, I've got a ton of beautiful ladies who've made beautiful aprons to share with you this week! The Apron Sew-Along was so fun that I've come up with another sewing project for those interested...so stay tuned, y'all. Until then, lemme show you something Dot-tastic! Lemme introduce to you the Kindergarten dot! With kindergarten, I always start the school year with a construction paper line sculpture (you can read all about my kindergarten unit on line here, if you wanna). Instead of giving the kids rectangular construction paper, I simply gave them either a black or white pre-cut (shutter if you like, it was our first day in art. We'll cut more later.) dot and let 'em have at it. Our Word of the Week that first week of school was artist. So after our 45 minute art class, we hoped on the Art Train (um, just a long line of kids that chugga-chugga-chuggas to each table). I held up each kid-created sculpture and would say, "Wow! Morgan is an artist!" to which everyone gave her a Whoop! Whoop! There wasn't a single kid not beaming before they left the art room. Now, you know, kindergarten is notorious for touching the walls. These have stayed unharmed...and I do believe it's because they created them! Totally Dotty Tuesday: Lookin' back on What I Wore for Dot Week last year...I gotta say I did several repeats. Tis okay. Don't nobody need to know...unless I tell em in a blog post. Der. sweater: thrifted; dress: vintage; belt: Target; sandals: Anthro My first graders are so proud of their mural! They've seen the fourth grader's Warhol Soup Cans and the third grader's Magritte mural so they were ready to create one of their own. So I took down The Great Wave that was still hanging outside my door from last school year's Asian adventure and replaced it with these lovelies. I feel like I'm taking a trip down Candy Cane Lane every day when walking in the art room door! Y'all might recall from my previous posts that the kids were learning about Kandinsky's concentric circles. After being inspired by that piece, we turned our attention to his other paintings that involve line like Composition VIII. The following art class, we made textured and stamped papers... and used those to create our flower petals! Like I said, more details to come this upcoming week! Not trying to be vague...but I don't wanna spoil all the fun. The kids also painted many sheets of line and shape patterned papers for the mural. They informed me that they loved painting on those big sheets o' paper the very best. Squiggly Lines and Dots Wednesday: The temps here have been slowly dropping so much so that I'm currently sitting in a sweater and wearing tights. TIGHTS! I'm so afraid to pack up summer duds this early because it was only a week ago that we were still trapped in the 90's. Not the decade, the temps. Did I really need to clarify for you? Sorry. sweater: Forever 21, old; dress and belt: Target So last year, all the kids had a coffee filter dot hanging in the window. It was the first time I'd hung art in the window (what took me so long?!) and it was a huge hit. This year, I picked up a buncha pizza rounds that were white on one side. I painted the other side black (to remove one useless step for my mere 30 minute classes)... And we talked about Kandinsky again. Which is totes perfect for my second grade friends as they are the grade level I'm taking to see the big ole Kandinsky exhibit that's coming to our local art museum The Frist. We looked at Kandinsky's painting Several Circles and our word of the week was creative. I challenged the kids to only paint dots or circles on this side of the board. We chatted how we'd have to be super creative with such a constraint and they totally nailed it. I love this dotty painting. On the reverse, we chatted about line and went crazy creating a line design in black ink. The following art classes we added color. I love how they rotate in the window so both sides of the painting are visible. These kids had Double Dot Duty! Open House Thursday: I still can't believe it's all up -- all 400 plus kids works of art. I really liked having a deadline to get all the work up and I think I might set that as a goal in the future. It forced me and the kids to really hop to it. AND I also snapped photos of (most) works of art and a super mom uploaded 'em all onto Artsonia for me! Yay, I'm thrilled! You can see them here. art supply blouse: DIY here; pencil skirt: DIY here; pencil shoes: DIY here My super third graders created these foil relief sculpture dots. I'm currently obsessed with Sharpie on aluminum foil (we've seen it before...and yet it never gets old!). I'm plotting a project for my fourth grade using a similar technique. But we couldn't just leave 'em be. Oh no, we had to dot-afy the frame as well. ESPECIALLY when metallic markers are thrown into the mix. Then the kids were unstoppable. Or, rather, undotable! They even wanted to sign their name like "Peter H. Reynolds" which totally cracked me up. Exhausted but Standing, Friday: Not gonna lie, after a long day (and night) at school on Thursday, I was super pooped. But it was a good, big-sigh-of-relief kind of tired. This weekend is gonna involve lots of chill-axing. And not much else. top, skirt, shoes: thrifted Here's a peak at what the final display of all my fourth grades stitched art looked like together. I paper clip chained them like I did the second grade paintings. I like the way the look all together like some sort of groovy stitched string art quilt. You can see the complete lesson on this string artiness here. I had one class finish their's off the very day of Open House. That didn't stress me out. Oh nooooooo. Not. At. Alllllll. And there you have it! Happy International Dot Day, everyone! I can't wait to hear all about what you and your students have created for the occasion!

More Me Made May-ness Monday: Could I fit any more M's into that intro? Me thinks not. blouse: vintage, thrifted; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; skirt: Made by Me, details here Hey, friends! I hope your week was fantabulous. This coming week of mine not only includes the last week of school but also our school-wide art show (yes, I know that's crazy...no, I didn't plan it that way). I'll be certain to share all the details of the art show with y'all in a super photo heavy blog post this Wednesday. That'll prolly be the next time you hear from me as I'm certain to be buried under artwork until then. In this here post, I'll give y'all a sneak peak into what the kids have been creating in preparation for el art showness. Also, since it's #MeMadeMay, I'm still sporting something I created daily. I'll be sharing all of these MeMades in a big fat post at the end of the month. Please, try and curb your enthusiasm. Until Wednesday, kids, fingers crossed I can pull off this art show! Toodles! Being MeMadeMay and all, I decided to go with a vintage tape measure as a headband and a wee lil vintage sewing machine brooch. Dude at Starbucks: "Is that caution tape in your hair?! Cool!" (insert head-banging-on-wall emoji here). Man, I gotta let you in on a lil secret. During these last few days of school, let the kids work on murals. Throw a big fat sheet of paper on the tables, let them work in groups of their choice, crank up the music to drown out the sound of their voices (I kid! Kinda!), give 'em a theme and watch 'em go to town. Granted, I did have a total of four kids completely loose their minds and paint their hands (like, two painted their hands red, y'all. Yes, they were caught "red handed". Sigh.) but for the most part, we had a great time. These will be used as the back drop for our Village of Kindness. Deets to come but a sneak peak here. Back to School Dress Tuesday: I crafted this dress at the start of the school year. It seriously seems like yesterday. With all of our snow days (I think we had 10?), this year seemed to zip by! Any of you teachers out there feel the same? dress: blog post here; shoes: Anthro, gift from a friend (thanks, Rebecca!) A while back, a teacher buddy gave me these huge posters of white paper. The kids have been painting circle paintings on them as another part of our art show excitement. You'll notice that not only are we painting but glazing clay projects as well. Ah, the end of the school year. Nothing like that rush to get EVERY-THANG done. At the last minute. Dresses Made During Snow Days Wednesday: Are really the best dresses, aren't they? I managed to bust out a ton of dresses this winter because of all those days. That was lovely. Not having enough time to finish all the art projects that I'd dreamed to doing with the kids? Not so much. dress: details here, y'all; sandals: like, ancient. Target I had kindergarten-land for the very last time this past week. We had a Yay-Boo moment. Yay, we'll see each other next year! Boo, this is our last art class as kindergarteners. So, we made a Kinder-Garden! We drew flowers in black oil pastel then painted them with either warm or cold colors. Then we switched the script for the background. I thought they came out just lovely. And one more thing to hang for the art show, yay! It's Come to This...Flip-Flops Thursday: I started the week in heels and by the middle, I was done. I scored these fun flips in NOLA. Get this, they smell like flowers! They are from a brand called Melissa that makes scented shoes. I love them! I was smelling my feet all day. Don't judge. sweater and brooches: thrifted; dress: made by me! By the way, this blog post, if you dare to read it, is INSANE...here; flips: Melissa brand OH, this excitement happened this week! Our "Johnson Elementary has Heart" mural went up this week! If you follow me on insta-gram crackers, you have already seen this. Full blog post to come...but until then, here's the start of our process. I love how this cheers up our front office which was formally referred to as the DMV for it's lovely drabness. Last Year's Back to School Dress Friday: Can I just brag and say that I've already got NEXT year's B2S dress in the werkz? Das right! Even if my sewing room did look like this just 24 hours ago (scroll downeth. Then scroll back upeth cuz I'm not done jib-jabbin' yet). sweater: Betsy Johnson, found at Buffalo Exchange; dress: blerg post here So. Can we have an honest chat here for a moment. I know when you come to this blog, like most, I show you the nice, clean and sunny side of my life. But I really, like really-really, struggle with packrat-itis. I recently picked up the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and I'm really enjoying it. Bottom line: get rid of anything that does not bring you joy. Now, I find that hard to apply as an artist/art teacher because, well, you never know, you know? However, this weekend, I decided to attack my sewing room (btw, welcome to my sewing room, y'all!) and, kidz, I gotta tell you, it felt so good! I'll be filling up my etsy shop with goodies next weekend, taking a truck load to Goodwill and tossing the rest. Ah! I can't even tell you how good this feels! My new motto is: nothing on the floor and nothing up to the ceiling (yes, it was that bad). I'll have to give you a tour soon!

Howdy, friends! If you live in the Tennessee area than you know what a wet and wild week we had! I like to thought it was NEVER gonna stop raining. Which means to outdoor recess for the kids...and it was full moon week. Regardless, we were rockin' through our paintings, embroidery, weaving and sewing projects this week and I couldn't be more excited about the progress the kids are making. We also got to meet a new friend to the art room this week: Our Monster from Cotton Monster Jen! Last week, I had the chance to see my mom who had picked up for me some fun things for my art room: these floats! I'm using them as "flexible seating" for my third graders as they weave. They were in heaven. So that folks who wanted to sit in the floats could have a turn, I set a timer for every five minutes. I also have a small fort, beach chairs and plenty of pillows for them to pick from. We played music and it was a regular weaving party! If you'd like to learn more about circle loom weaving, check out my blog posts with video. Even if I did look like a crazy person walking down the halls with these bad boys. I literally couldn't fit through my door! Since my students are involved in fiber arts projects right now, I'm thrilled to introduce them to Jennifer Strunge. This isn't the first time I've shared her work with my kids. You can see our Monster Sewing Project (with video!) here. We are voting on his name next week after brainstorming tons of ideas! Will keep you posted. Another thing my mama got for me? This hilariously inappropriate and yet so appropriate t-shirt. The kids had a big laugh over that one. While my third graders are weaving, my fourth graders are sewing. Some are sewing pizza pillows, donut pillows or, in this case, emojis! I'm hoping to have these complete by this coming week...ready to move on, y'all! Lesson details to come. My first graders are wrapping up their reversible dot paintings. This is a revamp of a lesson I did years ago with my second graders...I love this project! I'll be creating an updated blog post about this and what we did differently super soon. I purchased the cardboard pizza rounds from Gordon Food Services but you can also found them on Amazon. Did y'all know I like rainbows? What was the first clue...? And pizza. I'm also a fan of pizza. This HUGE pillow was completed by a fourth grader. You can check out this lesson and video here. Two of my second grade classes are stitching right now...and totally rocking it. They finished them off this week and they were so proud of themselves. Lesson details to come. I love stitching with kids. I think the best part of this week was seeing so many projects finally coming to fruition. It's been WEEKS and I'm so excited for these young artists. I'm also STOKED that I got ALL of the Getting to Know You sculptures up because, whew!, that took a minute. And that's a wrap! I hope y'all had a wonderful week...and here's to one heading right for us! Ah! Also happy to finally finish and hang my Paint the Town by Numbers Mr. Rogers.

Mondrian Monday: Ah, the day before the art show. Always 100% white-hot panic enduring. Thankfully my library buddy (hi, Barb!) offered to take my classes so I could spend the day unloading 400 clay projects from the kiln room and transforming the art room into a miniature gallery. She was a life-saver, I tell ya! Mondrian dress DIY: blog post here; shoes: from a friend Oh, hey! Look who said "I'll be right back on Wednesday with an art show blog post!" and then promptly when MIA. What can I say, I succumbed to pure exhaustion (even missing the end-of-the-school year party to collapse in bed at 7:30 on Thursday night). Not to mention, I didn't say which Wednesday I'd be talkin' at ya, did I? Lemme see if I can pull together that art show post this week. There's just so much to share I almost don't know where to start (including my secret recipe for hanging artwork that will NEVER HAVE IT FALL OF THE WALL AGAIN)! I'll be giving you a sneak peak in this here blog post. Another thing that's had me busy is my full blown attempted at declutterin' my life. I'm in it for realz this time, y'all. I'm reading this great book that I've told nearly everyone who will listen to me (which means I've told 5 people.) The book is The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Have any of y'all read it? Her whole theory is that you should only keep stuff that brings you joy. And she says you should start by decluttering your closets first. Y'all. Do you even KNOW how much clothing I have in my closets?! It's.In.Sane. In an attempt to declutter, make some cashola and share my amazing vintage finds with the universe, I've been spending the weekend snapping photos and uploading lovelies into my etsy shop: vintage domestic. I'll keep y'all posted on what other goodies I add in el shoppo. Oh! And I toooootally forgot to mention, I'm now on summer vacay! Hurray! Which means endless days of crafting and sewing whilst soaking up the summer sun are in my future, eeeee! Chat soon, y'all! I have a love of vintage clothing. Much of this clothing I'm selling are pieces I've been collecting since high school. Sadly, most have never been worn due to fit issues or simply the fact that I've no place to wear them. It's very hard for me to say goodbye but I know they'll go to someone who can truly appreciate them. Art Show Tuesday: My sweet mom drove 7 hours down from Indiana to attend my student's art show. She's done that a couple of times in the past, usually arriving early enough for me to put her to work. She wised up this visit...although I did have her help me bag and tag clay projects the following day. I'm one of those evil people that if you pop into my art room even for a moment, Ima put you to work, even if you are my mama! splatter paint dress: made by me, DIY here; sweater: Betsy Johnson; sandals: ooooold, Target Our annual art show is BANANAS, y'all. It was established well before I got there and it's always a packed house. I think we had well over 450 attendees with a school population under 400. We also provide free ice cream so that's a big draw: if you feed 'em ice creams, they will come. The Aftermath Wednesday: I felt like I'd survived a Great Wave after all that! My mom and I spent the day bagging and tagging clay projects with the teachers as they brought their kids to my room to collect their work. In my art show post, I'll 'splain to you just how I run the Big Fat Operation that is an Art Show. Great Wave dress: blog post here; sweater: Target The hubs was my super sweet photographer during the art show. He took a ton of snaps, can't wait to share them with you! More Me Made May Thursday: I really didn't think I'd have enough clothing to make it thru this month of me-mades but it turns out Ima have plenty. This little vintage hankie skirt I created ages ago after seeing on similar in Anthropologie for One.Million.Dollars. Or $100 which is pretty much the same in my checkbook. top: vintage, gift from a friend; skirt: made by me, here We had wall-to-wall clay projects on display in the art room. My second graders created those butterflies (we were on a butterfly roll, with this and that, what can I say?) and my third grade sculpted the flowers (complete lesson here). School's Out for the Summer Friday!: Oh, yeah, y'all. I'm ready! Although it came so fast and after so much stuff going down, it almost seems unreal. By the way, that skirt was created pre-blogging days! Twas my first (and currently last) article of clothing in which I stitched an invisible zipper! That's on my summer to-do list. top: I dunno, Target?; skirt: made by me with vintage and new fabric

Dot-Tastic Monday: Okay, I gotta admit, it was by total accident that I wore this polka dotted dress on Monday...which proceeded to inspire my wardrobe for the next coupla weeks. All for the love of The Dot. dress: vintage, Wasteland in San Francisco; shoes: Swedish Hasbeens, Anthro; belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; necklace: Target Have ya'll read the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds? Well, I have. And so has Rebecca. Like, 24 times. Once for each class we see. And, I gotta admit, I never tire of the book. It's that great. So when I found out that there was something called International Dot Day, I knew we had to participate. Rebecca suggested we hang the kids' painted coffee filters (created for a future art project) and, viola! We dot-a-sized the entire school. More details on our project later this week. For the occasion, I've decided to wear a polka dotted outfit until our school's Open House this Thursday. Which means, when all is said and done, I will have worn dots for 10 days. At first I didn't think I could pull it off and thought I'd be doing some dot-tastic DIY's but, as it turns out, this hoarder's wardrobe is just full of dots. It's a little nuts. Someone might have a problem. Just sayin. But back to the dot. All week, we've been stressing the theme of The Dot which is to inspire. Without ruining the plot, an art teacher inspires a student who then inspires an aspiring artist in return. During deep convo about this theme with my first grade students, this happened: Me: So! What do you think would happen if this story continued...? First Grade Dude: That little boy in the story will be expired. Me (without correcting him because I'm dying to see where this goes): Oh yeah? And what do you think will happen when everyone sees our dots on display for Open House? F.G.D.: Then our family will expire, our friends will be expired and, well, everyone will expire! Yeah, so. Let's hope nothing that dramatic happens. I'll keep you posted. Until then, I hope your week is dot-tastic! Dontcha love this dress? Girl traveled all over Europe this summer and picked this dress up in Stockholm. How many people get to say that? "Oh, this ole thang? Stockholm, baby. Stock-I'm-a-World-Traveler-holm." Not read The Dot? Why not let youtube read it for you? 1960's Does Dots Tuesday: There's this little thrift store I rarely go to and on the day I do, I find this sweet 1960's two piece. What you can't see is the sweet bow at the neck and the delicate buttons down the back. Can you tell I love it? shoes: vintage, thrifted; daisy necklace and earrings: gift from a friend I love those sandals. They will more than likely come up missing from her closet. Don't tell her. Art teacher buds, have you ever participated in International Dot Day? This was my first time...and I loved it! I can't wait to share with you what else we've created to celebrate this awesome book. Dotted Window Wednesday: Chaining these coffee filters together took some trouble shooting. I'll have so spare you the trouble and show you are secrets this week. dress: thrifted; sweater: ebay Not gonna lie, this colorful window makes me pretty happy. Picture Day Thursday: Yay! Nothing like remembering it's Picture Day until you are walking out the door. So I just stuck a palette in my hair and called it a day. dress: Target; belt: Plato's Closet Oops, he forgot "Be Expired!" PANTS! Friday: Seriously. I have more students make comments when I wear pants than any other day. It's kinda craycray. blouse: gift from a friend; jeans: Target; shoes: Anthro Guess who got her hairs did?! I love it, don't you? When it's straight, she's got an Ariel vibe and when it's curly, she's totally that girl from Brave. The kids love it. And check out that awesome hair bow. Her mom created that for her when she was a kid...the kids and I love it's sparkly awesomeness. And, in celebration of a good book, it's Book Fair Week at our school! This year the book fair has an Egyptian theme (where were they two years ago?!). So to kick it off, we dressed a lil crazy and caused a ruckus on the school's morning announcements. That's one of my dear teacher buddies wrapped up in toilet paper. She's such an awesome sport.

Squidward Monday: I scored this Artists Only Squidward shirt at a resale shop and love it as did the kids. It was the perfect comfy thing to wear on a Monday because, let's face it, Mon-daze are no bueno. top: Buffalo Exchange but also available at Forever21; Matisse-inspired skirt: estate sale; tights: Target; shoes: Fluevog Sup, buddies?! I do believe it's been a good coupla weeks since I've shown y'all what I've been a-wearing but it's totes not my fault. I've not worked a full week since the holidays, I swear! And it currently seems like I'm buried under my To-Do lists, swimming upstream from the piles of student artwork, stacks of personal projects and just mounds of STUFF. Every weekend, I try and catch up and every Monday, I'm all... But, whateves. We're all busy, right? It's just a matter of managing the messes. Which, as it turns out, I'm suck-tastic at doing. Oh well. I take heart in knowing that I've got another shot at getting my life together every Monday. Wish me luck, y'all! Crayon-tastic Tuesday: My fourth graders are in the middle of some crayon-inspired projects. They are making three-dimensional papier mache'd crayons as well as team-work collaborative two-dimensional designs. That lesson (with video!) will be up on my blog this week. I wore this lil ensemble for some inspo! crayon sweater: made by me, DIY here; crazy art teacherin' skirt: made by me, DIY here Honest speaking: I don't do many team projects. Okay so maybe I've NEVER done a team project. Mostly cuz I didn't know how it would pan out...would the kids get along, would I need to intervene, would they be able to pick their teams, etc. Well, I gotta say, I'm a convert! This has been such a success so far. I only had to step in to tell 'em to stop and clean up! Like I said, this lesson will be up on Tuesday this week so stay tuned (but if you wanna see the lesson video now, go here)! If you follow me here, you've already seen a sneak preview of how these are turning out! Hump Day!: My mission of late is to be as comfy as possible so this sweatshirt and stretch pencil skirt is the new yoga pant, says me. Also, I'm totes on a combat boot bender, y'all. I've bought two in the last month. I love the stacked heal but also the comfort. It also reminds me of my 1990's alternative-dressin' days! Keith Haring top: Forever 21; skirt: old, Target; boots: Aldo I shared my firsties Mad Scientist lesson with y'all here. Here was our final installment of the lesson: bubble printing! It was just about the most funnest thing ever and reminded me about everything I love about teaching art. Lemme tell you how we did it... Firsties at their finest! To make the bubble printing paint use the following: aluminum pie pans, dish soap, water and paint. I add about two table spoons of soap to the pan with nearly a 1/4 cup of paint. Then stir in about 1-2 cups of water. There really isn't any exact science to it, I just dumped stuff in but for those of you that like measurements, there you go. Stir it around and it's ready! I had four students at each table with four different colors in each spot: red, blue, black and yellow. The kids were armed with a straw and a piece of construction paper (any thicker stock paper would work). I then told the kids our routine. When I hit my chime once, they place their paper in the corner of their table and blow into the pan in front of them. When I hit the chime again (10 seconds or so later), they were to "Smash Them Bubbles!" which quickly became our new chat. Then I would say, "Move to the right, move to the right, take your paper and your stray and move to the right, show me you're ready!". The kids would place their paper in the corner of their table again, bend down in front of their new pan and wait for the chime. It worked great! The next day, I spent about 10 minutes gluing their artwork to their new frames. They look fab, says moi! We're Almost There, Thursday: So the rumors went to flying about bubble printing! My kindergarteners came in asking if they were going to do it because their sibs had told them all about it. Made me so happy! AND I had totes planned on them doing it as well so they were thrilled! sweater: Boden, thrifted; dress: Modcloth; boots: Frye; necklace: Paper Source; belt: Amazon Finally Friday!: By the way, if you are curious as to why I am standing in front of the same stinkin' back drop this week, it's because my art room has become the armpit of the school. Between bubble printing, papier mache, printmaking, chalking, painting and collage, the art room looks like, well, an art room. But I thought I'd spare you the gory. sweater: old, H&M; paint drip scarf: flea market; scissor skirt: old, Modcloth; boots: Frye; palette hair clip: DIY, here Just in case you were wondering what my cabinet said! You can take a tour of my art room if you are interested here!

Monday Selfies: So several of my classes are still deep in self-portrait land. To celebrate the occasion of drawing the best looking kids we know (ahem, ourselves), I wore this lovely sweater that a sweet friend gifted to me several years ago. As crazy as it sounds I'd only mustered up the courage to wear this bad boy THIS WEEK. After removing the shoulder pads, that is. And I have no idea why! The kids loved it and it was a great topic of discussion. Silly me. sweater: Michael Simon, thanks, Ann!; dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange; blue tights and hot pink fishnets: Target; shoes: Clarks Well, here 'tis. The 150th What the Art Teacher Wore post. I really thought y'all were gonna throw me a surprise party with cuppie-cakes and those cans of "beans" where snakes pop out. Because those get me every.time. Actually I contemplated for a hot minute about doing something extra special here on el bloggo but then I started thinking about cuppie-cakes and snake-bean-can-thingies and got all sorts of distracted. Big surprise, amirite? In other news, don't hate, but I have exactly 4.5 days until Thanksgiving Break! Which, for me, means a whole freakin' week off! Thankful? You betcha! Like, when I was a kid, we got Thursday and Friday off and it usually entailed makin' the rounds to the grandparentals house for weird a## food like congealed salad and mystery stuffing covered in even more mysterious gravy. {Shivers}. I don't miss the culinary disasters of those days. I do miss my grandparentals thou, hold the gravy. Really, grandma, I'm full. I honestly don't think I can spit anymore into my napkin. On that delightful note, I hope y'all have a fab-o week! Be sure to pop back by on Tuesday as I FINALLY finished my Halloween costume (shuddup). If you follow me here, you've seen glimpses of the pencil-tasticness that I managed to wrap up this weekend. Also I'll be back with a quick video tutorial on how to teach 3-D lettering to your under-10 kiddos. Until then, stay away from that mystery gravy, y'all! NO ONE HAS SEEN GRANDPA FOR DAYS. Just.Sayin. In case you need a closer look at the awesomeness. The kids loved the different images and, of course, it was a great segue into Pop Art. My third graders are currently creating superhero selfies and learning all about Lichtenstein, Warhol and Pop Art. Of course, there's always that one rando class that's a millennia behind. Case in point: this fourth grade class wrapping up their It's Okay to be Different selfies (so I can finally work on that mural, y'all!). This artist told me, "I wanted my self portrait to have those eye-thingies like you have!" Eye-thingies, cat-eyes, you say tomato, I say shuddup. Mad Mod Tuesday: This dress was a super big hit, y'all! I'm so glad I procrastinated cleaning the house for yet another day (er, week) to bust out this number. I do have to say that the kids were even more curious about the boots (we learned the monkey and the mashed potato to celebrate the awesomeness that is The Boots) and my tights. Most asked question of the day: Where did you find two-toned tights? Answer: I didn't. I'm actually wearing two pairs of tights and awkwardly tucking one leg. You see? It's really best you don't ask. dress: made by me, more here; boots: thrifted vintage Most of my younger artists wrapped up these selfies this week and we started hanging them in the halls. Don't tell but this one is secretly my fave. Lesson details here. Onomatopeia Wednesday: The first phase of my third graders super hero selfies is that they have to come up with an onomatopoeia, draw it in block letters, 3-D-ize it and add it to an action-packed background. Teaching the under-10 set how to draw in 3-D is a challenge but I think I figured it out. Stay tuned for a video clip all about the process later next week. sweater: Target, last year; dress: Buffalo Exchange; tights and fishnets: Target; Frye boots: Journeys Sew Happy Thursday: My Thursdays are my busiest days class-wise. But, no bother, I had a sewing class at Craft South with Miss Make that I was super stoked about! We're working on a circle skirt with a lapped zip and I'm thrilled with how easy it is. Which is only the case because Devon is an excellent teacher. I'll be sure to share my circle skirt with you once it's complete. sweater: felted by me! More here; dress: anthro; necklace: The Paper Source Happy Mixed Pattern Friday!: Okay, don't judge but this week, I totally busted out my Christmas decor. I'm just so excited! I'm slowly weeding out my non-vintage dec for vintage and I'm so happy with how everything is looking. I'll be sure to share with y'all soon. I NEVER decorate for the holidays before Thanksgiving, just so you know. But the level of excitement just was too much for me not to bust out the Kitsch-mas! dress: Plato's Closet with leopard print added by me; belt and crinoline: Amazon; scarf: Charleston market Turns out someone else was equally excited about the vintage decor. Asha immediately made a bed for herself in front of the color wheel as soon as I set up the tree skirt. Fingers crossed she doesn't take out any of my Shiny Brites like she did last year. Behave, kitty!

Happy International Dot Day, y'all! I thought I'd share with you what my students created for International Dot Day in this here What I Wore post because I'm so stinkin' excited! My lil artist friends have worked so hard for weeks on these masterpieces (I've shared a sneak peak here and last year's Dot Day here)...and their art teacher (um, that'd be me, speaking in third person like a true crazy) just barely got everything up in time for Thursday's Open House. Over the next coupla weeks, I'll post the complete dotty lessons starting with that Dots-turned-Flower-Garden mural that my sweet first grade artist created as it's my personal fave. Or was it the stitched dots by fourth grade? Maybe the metal dots by third...? Oh, I can't decide, I just loves 'em all! This week our Word of the Week was inspire and our Artist Inspiration was the author of The Dot, Peter H. Reynolds. We chatted about how The Dot has inspired artists all over the world to "create a mark and see where it takes you". The kids and I talked about how their dots can now inspire others throughout our school. It was so fun to hear them encourage each other and drop the "i" bomb (that'd be "inspire") as they know that anytime anyone says the Word of the Week, everyone says "Whoop! Whoop!" In other non-dotty news, I've got a ton of beautiful ladies who've made beautiful aprons to share with you this week! The Apron Sew-Along was so fun that I've come up with another sewing project for those interested...so stay tuned, y'all. Until then, lemme show you something Dot-tastic! Lemme introduce to you the Kindergarten dot! With kindergarten, I always start the school year with a construction paper line sculpture (you can read all about my kindergarten unit on line here, if you wanna). Instead of giving the kids rectangular construction paper, I simply gave them either a black or white pre-cut (shutter if you like, it was our first day in art. We'll cut more later.) dot and let 'em have at it. Our Word of the Week that first week of school was artist. So after our 45 minute art class, we hoped on the Art Train (um, just a long line of kids that chugga-chugga-chuggas to each table). I held up each kid-created sculpture and would say, "Wow! Morgan is an artist!" to which everyone gave her a Whoop! Whoop! There wasn't a single kid not beaming before they left the art room. Now, you know, kindergarten is notorious for touching the walls. These have stayed unharmed...and I do believe it's because they created them! Totally Dotty Tuesday: Lookin' back on What I Wore for Dot Week last year...I gotta say I did several repeats. Tis okay. Don't nobody need to know...unless I tell em in a blog post. Der. sweater: thrifted; dress: vintage; belt: Target; sandals: Anthro My first graders are so proud of their mural! They've seen the fourth grader's Warhol Soup Cans and the third grader's Magritte mural so they were ready to create one of their own. So I took down The Great Wave that was still hanging outside my door from last school year's Asian adventure and replaced it with these lovelies. I feel like I'm taking a trip down Candy Cane Lane every day when walking in the art room door! Y'all might recall from my previous posts that the kids were learning about Kandinsky's concentric circles. After being inspired by that piece, we turned our attention to his other paintings that involve line like Composition VIII. The following art class, we made textured and stamped papers... and used those to create our flower petals! Like I said, more details to come this upcoming week! Not trying to be vague...but I don't wanna spoil all the fun. The kids also painted many sheets of line and shape patterned papers for the mural. They informed me that they loved painting on those big sheets o' paper the very best. Squiggly Lines and Dots Wednesday: The temps here have been slowly dropping so much so that I'm currently sitting in a sweater and wearing tights. TIGHTS! I'm so afraid to pack up summer duds this early because it was only a week ago that we were still trapped in the 90's. Not the decade, the temps. Did I really need to clarify for you? Sorry. sweater: Forever 21, old; dress and belt: Target So last year, all the kids had a coffee filter dot hanging in the window. It was the first time I'd hung art in the window (what took me so long?!) and it was a huge hit. This year, I picked up a buncha pizza rounds that were white on one side. I painted the other side black (to remove one useless step for my mere 30 minute classes)... And we talked about Kandinsky again. Which is totes perfect for my second grade friends as they are the grade level I'm taking to see the big ole Kandinsky exhibit that's coming to our local art museum The Frist. We looked at Kandinsky's painting Several Circles and our word of the week was creative. I challenged the kids to only paint dots or circles on this side of the board. We chatted how we'd have to be super creative with such a constraint and they totally nailed it. I love this dotty painting. On the reverse, we chatted about line and went crazy creating a line design in black ink. The following art classes we added color. I love how they rotate in the window so both sides of the painting are visible. These kids had Double Dot Duty! Open House Thursday: I still can't believe it's all up -- all 400 plus kids works of art. I really liked having a deadline to get all the work up and I think I might set that as a goal in the future. It forced me and the kids to really hop to it. AND I also snapped photos of (most) works of art and a super mom uploaded 'em all onto Artsonia for me! Yay, I'm thrilled! You can see them here. art supply blouse: DIY here; pencil skirt: DIY here; pencil shoes: DIY here My super third graders created these foil relief sculpture dots. I'm currently obsessed with Sharpie on aluminum foil (we've seen it before...and yet it never gets old!). I'm plotting a project for my fourth grade using a similar technique. But we couldn't just leave 'em be. Oh no, we had to dot-afy the frame as well. ESPECIALLY when metallic markers are thrown into the mix. Then the kids were unstoppable. Or, rather, undotable! They even wanted to sign their name like "Peter H. Reynolds" which totally cracked me up. Exhausted but Standing, Friday: Not gonna lie, after a long day (and night) at school on Thursday, I was super pooped. But it was a good, big-sigh-of-relief kind of tired. This weekend is gonna involve lots of chill-axing. And not much else. top, skirt, shoes: thrifted Here's a peak at what the final display of all my fourth grades stitched art looked like together. I paper clip chained them like I did the second grade paintings. I like the way the look all together like some sort of groovy stitched string art quilt. You can see the complete lesson on this string artiness here. I had one class finish their's off the very day of Open House. That didn't stress me out. Oh nooooooo. Not. At. Alllllll. And there you have it! Happy International Dot Day, everyone! I can't wait to hear all about what you and your students have created for the occasion!

Feelin' Frida-ish Monday: I have a coupla after school art clubs, in those small groups, we have the most enlightening convos. One girl asked, "We learn about men artists a lot. Aren't there any girl artists?" I had already been thinking about how I'd like to introduce more contemporary artists next year (this guy does it all the time and has me inspired) but now I know that more female artists need to be thrown into the mix. So! What contemporary/female artists do you introduce in your art room? dress: thrift store; necklaces: Forever39, ahem, 21; belt: Anthropologie; tights: Target; boots: Seychelles I don't know what life is like on your end of the world but I'm sure it's crazy-busy. Especially if you are a teacher. End-of-the-school-year projects to wrap up, mountains of artwork to sort for our school-wide art show, let's-get-rid-of-this-stuff spring cleaning, the list grows by the day. So this week, I thought I'd share with you just some of the things we've been working on in the art room. Complete lessons on this here blog to come, but for now, you'll have to savor these sneak-peaks. AND, just so's ya know, Wednesday, April 30th is the LAST CALL FOR THE BEST DRESSED ART TEACHER CONTEST! Yes, I'm shouting at you, that's how excited I am! So many of you awesome art teachers have sent me snaps that left me rolling in laughter (which is a good thing, I swear! Ya'll are the best!). What's the Best Dressed Art Teacher Contest, you ask? Well, here's the details: Nominate yourself or an art teacher buddy! Simply send an email to me at [email protected] with a photo of your best artsy look. High resolution photos preferred, please. Please include a short bio about the art teacher and what inspired the look. Photos and bio will be shared on this blog on April 30th. Open voting on this blog will end on May 5th and the winner will be announced May 7th! The winner will receive a magical prize along with an interview on this blog. So! what are you waiting for? Shoot me an email, you crazy art teacher, you! So if I'm not found Buried Alive under the 400+ clay projects that the kids have created over the last coupla weeks, it'll be a miracle. These clay stars were created a couple months back. Our original intent was to glaze them and "sell" them back to our parents with the proceeds going to charity. However, due to some personal stuff, that had to get placed on the back burner. But now we're back! And I just knew I'd never be able to get 400+ stars glazed and fired along with all those projects. So I lurked the interwebs for a possible solution and saw something about coloring clay projects with crayons...(well, construction paper crayons were recommended but, in the state that my room is currently in, there was no finding mine)... We painted over them with watercolor paint (I asked that the kids pick just one color, por favor) and viola! Colorful and completed in a snap! More details about these stars and how they were created in an upcoming post. Bump-It Up Tuesday: So I had a hair appointment after school on Tuesday (not that you'd ever be able to tell I got my hair cut. I'm such a chicken, I always just get a couple inches taken off. So boring!). Once seated in the hair-cuttin-hot-seat, I proceeded to unravel the following from my 'do: 11 Bobby Pins, 2 Pink Bows and 1 Extra Large Bumpit. My hair dressers reaction, after regaining her thoughts, "Ohmigawd, IS THAT A BUMPIT?!" I live in the South, ya'll! It's Big Hair or Die! shoes, sweater and top: thrift store; skirt and belt: Pin Up Girl Clothing Speaking of clay projects...my 3rd graders created these Chinese-inspired clay dragons. Ya'll, this project was such a hit! I would easily do this again with all grade levels. The creativity was off the chain crazy! I can't wait for them to glaze them so I can share the easy-peasy lesson with you. Some of my 4th grade students created Panda's with Personality (oh boy, ya'll. Do they ever have personality!) while another group created Asian elephants inspired by the painted elephants in India. Many added jewelry, fabric and flowers to their elephants. I have a feeling these are going to be the most colorful elephants ever. So Stinkin' Tired Wednesday: Seriously. The end of the school year is near...and my work load only builds as I'm sure yours does as well. This photo was the only one I managed NOT to be yawning my head off in. dress: vintage, thrifted; tights: Target; shoes: Dolls by Nina After finishing off our clay projects, We Returned to Our Normally Scheduled Program, Already in Progress (said in that officially dorky voice). Which means my 4th graders added either bamboo, cherry blossom trees or pine trees to their large (12" X 18") watercolor painted backgrounds. Lesson to come, promise! What is Wrong with You, Thursday?!: Wow, this outfit was a let down to the folks, both big and small, in my school! The 4th grade decided that they had never seen me in "short shoes" (um, I'm guessing that means flats?!) and my librarian buddy dubbed this a "too normal" of an outfit. Humph! Time to get outta these Short Shoes and step up my Non-Normal game, I guess! top: Target; skirt: vintage, etsy; shoes: gift; headband: made by me; necklace: The Paper Source Meanwhile, in 3rd grade, we excitedly finished these Ming vase inspired still lives. We spent a long time on this project but learned so much...I'll be sharing this lesson later this week. Stay tuned, ya'll! Hittin' the Town, Friday: Almost everyday after school, there's something going on. Whether it's an art club or meeting up with buddies, I'm always running. I had decided that, with art show approaching, I should spend more after school time in my art room...but I just can't! Not with buddies that I need to chat and shop with. Tamara, thank you for snapping this photo at my happy place -- Anthropologie (where I walked out with a not-at-all-necessary $298 dress for $26, eeee!). dress: made by me (go here for the craziest food-processing-foot-cutting story everrr) My 1st grade friends made clay koi fish...and while those dry, they are creating these koinobori (Japanese for Carp Kite) for May 5th which is Children's Day in Japan. I actually picked up these die-cut paper fish years ago through Roylco and never got around to having the kids create them. This time it worked to be the perfect tie-in, as well as a super short project while our clay drys out. I'll share with you more about this project soon. Ah! So much to share with ya's!

Feelin' Funky Monday: I wish I'd snapped a better photo of this skirt because it's straight up amazing. I scooped it up at the super fantastic etsy store SassySenoritaVintage (great shop, awesome seller!). It's completely hand appliquéd and so detailed. After receiving it, I thought I'd try my hand at the same appliqué method only to find that it's super intense! That's a DIY that might take a while. top and necklace: Anthro, gift from a friend; skirt: vintage, SassySenoritaVintage; shoes: last season, Payless Hey there, all y'all! Unlike last week when I wrote this post, this week zipped by at the speed of light. And it's kinda freakin' me out to think that we'll be in September before we know it. So much art making to do, always so little time! Story of every art teacher's life. This week I thought I'd share with you a lil sneak peak of our dot-inspired projects for International Dot Day! At first it was kinda tough coming up with dot-esque projects...and now I can't STOP coming up with ideas! I'm trying to force myself to save 'em for next year. I mean, we can't have every project this year be based around a dot...or can we?! I'll share the complete deets on these projects when the kids have completed 'em. In other news: I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THE APRON SEW-ALONG! I've loved seeing everyone's creations thus far (some of you have even finished your aprons, you over-achievers!), it's been so inspiring and super fun. If you wanna join along and see what's peeps be making, go here. This week, I'll share with you how to finish that apron off. Then I HAVE A SURPRISE in store for those of you that complete your apron! But you'll have to wait for the final apron-sewing installment to find that out, eee! Also, can I just tell y'all how much I've loved hearing your stories of childhood memories that built the brick sh## house you are today?! I'm so inspired, happy, motivated-to-be-that-person-in-a-child's-life that you just don't know. You can still leave your story and be entered to win a Spiral Art Kit by August 31st. Looking forward to hearing from you! Finally, can we talk about the neglected elephant in the room: The Artsy Book Club? This week I'm gonna show y'all the influence the Teach like a Pirate book has had on my first couple of days/weeks in the art room. I've tweaked routine/lessons/song-and-dance a little bit and I'm looking forward to sharing with ya what's worked and what needs more work, if ya know what I mean. Alrightie, kids! I'll be back soon with more apron-age, a visit to my art room and a brand new DIY (er, finally! It seems I got a little distracted by Orange is the New Black marathons. My bad.). Chat soon! Second Grade Reversible Abstract Paintings: I'll share the complete lesson with ya when these bad boys are finished. But for now, lemme give you the short version: listened to a variety of musical instruments (my gong, rain stick, and this thing called a spring drum that I'll share with you this upcoming week) and painted a variety of lines. Our influence was Kandinsky and how music influenced his work. Once the lines were painted, we've started adding color. Some kids have decided to also embellish further with pattern. I'm hoping by next week or so we'll be ready to start on the other side of this pizza round (purchased through School Specialty for $16/100 rounds). Tacklin' Tuesday: Sometimes I get the question: How do you stay clean in the art room?! Well, I usually don't. Nor do my students. We're almost always in aprons but there are the occasions where we forget, there's a paint spill and clothes receive an unfortunate makeover. I had a sweet first grade student spill paint who FREAKED because she thought her skin would be permanently stained ("I can't be paint splotchy for the rest of my life!"...y'all, I tried SO HARD not to laugh). I thought we'd cleaned up the entire spill when a third grader came up to me later with the very same paint on her skirt (there'd been a blob hiding on the table, just waiting to attack). I felt so bad! But the next day, she came in with a bag of chocolates for me and a kind note from her mother telling me that "this happens, no worries." Gah! Such kindness. And chocolate! top and shoes: thrifted; skirt and necklace: Anthro First Grade Concentric Circles and Radial Designs: For the dots in first grade, the kids painted their plates with a concentric pattern and then added detail in tiny brushes with black ink. Once complete, we created those painted papers (one side textured the other side dot-stamped) which we'll use to enhance our plates. This is gonna be for a great big hairy group project that I just can't wait to show you! Deets to come, y'all. Dang! Can you believe some of that detailed first grade painting?! I mean, these kids are 5 years old, y'all! Maxi Wednesday: This is my Art Teacher from the 1970's ensemble. You like? I'm into this whole bright color/ethnic pattern thing that I'm seeing everywhere and it's totes influencing my outfit choices. dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Sparkly Relief Dots by Third Grade: So my third grade kids cut out a circle from a styro plate and then added smaller styro circles on top of that. Once complete, we hit it with some spray glue, covered it with foil and they went to town creating their designs. They're kinda like round zen-tangles. I really like how they are turning out...but I'm uncertain just who we'll present these to the world. I'd love to hear your thoughts...should we simply mount them on a piece of construction paper? Maybe continue the line design on that background paper? Or perhaps create a design on the reverse and hang them mobile style? I'd truly love some input, y'all! Thursday, Already?: This week seemed to zip right by for me. And next week will be the same as we have a half day on Friday and Monday off. Then, it will be SEPTEMBER! How in the world did that happen?! dress: vintage, Buffalo Exchange Because I love them so and didn't think the first photo did 'em justice, I thought I'd share some close ups. String Art in Fourth Grade Land: When I was in fifth grade, we did this really fun string art project that I still have. I thought it was the best thing ever...and decided that my fourth grade should experience that fun-ness too. So we've spent the last couple of art classes decorating our boards (with a lil texture combin' and splatter paintin...since I was an 80's child, splatter paint seemed appropriate). The kids also had to start punching the correct amount of holes into the board and practicing their design ideas. Their fingers are itching to start stitching...and I'm excited to say we'll begin next week! A Friday with Balls: Holy crap, when I saw this crazy ballsy outfit at Anthropologie recently, I knew I had to have it in my life. Of course, I waited around until the sucker was on double markdown (I just cannot stomach purchasing full price in that joint or even first markdown for that matter). I did learn something interesting with this purchase: if they don't have your size in the store but have it online, you can purchase it in the store and they'll ship it FOR FREE to your house. Which saved me like $10 in shipping. everything: Anthro Speaking of shipping, there was some serious happiness in my mailbox this week! Artist and art teacher Daniel Langhans sent me those awesome CareBear stickers along with that rad card...and that envelope! You can find more of Daniel's awesomeness here: TiltedEarthStudios.com. I can't wait to enlarger that envelope on the copier and make it into a sign for my art room! And another art teacher buddy of mine sent me this gems she'd recently printed (Kelly, I LOVE THEM!). You can find handmade items by Kelly here: etsy.com/shop/jkmartinstudios. These prints totally put me in the mood for my fave holiday. I already have a place for them on the wall in our living room, I just need to get them framed. Funny thing is, both these awesome artists are from Arizona! Thanks guys!!