The Birth of Suzie

Shaped the head out of a Styrofoam ball and gouged out some eyes and nose holes. Sliced off the bottom jaw and set aside. 

Carved out a place for my hand (which I later had to make some adjustments to because it shouldn't have been so open and my palm needed a place to rest). 

Cut out a space for my thumb in the bottom jaw and covered the Styrofoam part with fabric so it wasn't so scratchy on my skin. Covered the opening of the hole with cardboard to give a place for resistance for my thumb. 

Covered the Styrofoam with fabric (flannel) to keep it from being too scratchy. 

Using a glue gun, although I could have used spray adhesive, I attached the flannel to the face and head, wrapping around the edges of the jaw. 

I cut off the extra flannel from the back of the head. 

I used large googly eyes and wanted some eyelids so she didn't look too much like an alien. 

I poked some holes into the back of the eyes so I could drop some glue in there to keep the eyes from "googling." Then I glued the eyelids into place. 

Added felt eyelashes. Oh, and the nose is a small ball of Styrofoam covered in flannel. I just piled in a bunch of glue into each socket to secure the eyes and nose. 

After covering the bottom jaw with flannel, I lined it up with the top jaw and glued along the hinges to attach the mouth. 

Glued on some black felt for the inside of the mouth. 

Back of Suzie's unfinished neck. Needed a "tube" for my arm and hand to fit into. 

Got the wig at a thrift store and just glued a ribbon into her hair to make her a little less like a granny. 

Glued around the neck of an old tshirt so that she could wear clothes and have stuffing put inside without making a mess when I use her. 

"Neck tube" is inside of the tshirt. 

Finally, just sewed some hands and attached them to the sleeves of the tshirt. I stuffed the whole tshirt, but not the neck tube, and finally put her thrift store baby dress on over the lumpy stuffed tshirt. 

And there's my baby!!

Little Red Hen Barn

For my final contribution to my kindergarten student teaching placement, I made a giant construction paper barn to be stapled to the bulletin board for the kids' Little Red Hen Play. The quality of the photo is a little bad, but I'm really proud of the product.

You can view this a little larger if you click on it. 

I made the hen, rooster, horse, fence and barn. The paper plate guys are by the kindergartners. After I finished, my cooperating teacher had the thing laminated so she could keep using it year after year. You can see that it's pretty huge because the maroon backdrop is a pretty standard school sized bulletin board. The kids stood on the counter in front of the barn wearing an animal costume and then Mrs. T took a picture of them for their memory book. Cute huh??

PS. I really like pictures made from cut-out construction paper.

Flower arrangement

Ok. This one's a little lame, but I'd like some feedback here. I've never done a flower arrangement before, but we got this picnic basket as a wedding present and didn't know what to do with it and never returned it so we were stuck with it. I decided to go buy some flowers and try to make an arrangement. I'm pretty happy with it overall, but I'm wondering what other people think about it.

Afternoon on the Amazon

In my second grade student teaching experience, I was in charge of decorating the door for a contest (and we won... by the way). Second grade chose to decorate their doors based on Magic Tree House books, and our room chose Afternoon on the Amazon. I drew up a few animals and then designed stations for the kids to make their own animals using my tracers and directions on how to make the animals. There were teams in charge of each animal, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Here's the final result: 

So... pretty fun. I like animals and colors and the kids really got into it and did a nice job :) 

Sad Suzie

My husband went to a teaching conference and came away with a great idea to use puppets in the classroom when teaching reading strategies and correcting the students when they make a mistake with grammar or anything else. He asked if I would be interested in trying to make a puppet and I just went nuts. We spent a solid day looking for puppet supplies at the thrift store and craft stores, and after a few days of concentrated labor, Suzie was born. I call her Sad Suzie because she just looks so sad. I didn't mean to make her look sad, but hey - this is the first puppet I've ever made. The whole idea with her is that she is teased because she has purple skin and curly hair. I actually had a couple opportunities to use her in my kindergarten student teaching experience and the kids LOVED her. The first occasion happened when a little boy handed out birthday invitations in class, but he only invited SOME of the boys and SOME of the girls. Feelings were hurt, and Sad Suzie was called in for some mood lifting. I brought her out and the kids SCREAMED. Literally screamed. She told them that she was at the bus stop that morning and two friends were going to have a play date and she wasn't invited, even after she asked them. The kindergartners were very sad for Suzie, and offered many different solutions to her problem including find someone else to have a play date with, ignore them, or talk to your parents or teacher about your feelings. This conversation was accompanied by reading a book about feelings. Another time, I came to school with curly hair (when it's normally straightened) and the kids freaked. They told me my hair looked "really bad," "so weird," and "freaky." Soooo Suzie made an appearance. We read a book about teasing, and Suzie talked about how it hurts her feelings when she's teased about her hair. I told Suzie that I was teased about my hair and the kids went crazy again - "I DIDN'T TEASE YOU! I THINK YOU LOOK SOOOOO PRETTY!" hahahhahaha - hilarious. Suzie is awesome, and the kids think she is a real person. I'm very pleased with how she turned out, and I'm thinking about writing a couple of stories using her and taking photos to accompany the story. We'll see. Anyway... enjoy :)

The Shark Who Was Afraid of Everything

As an elementary education major, I had a lot of opportunities to use my creativity in the lessons that I had to plan for my classes during practicum and student teaching. One project I'm particularly proud of is my stick puppet set for The Shark Who Was Afraid of Everything. The assignment was to create a shared reading lesson, and as I was reading through some books I thought that this was one that I could maybe replicate in pictures so that the kids would have something to use to retell the story (which, by the way, is a very important part of literacy development of young readers!). Ultimately, I think the lesson is a bit too complicated (too many props) for kindergarten, but I was able to make it work, and they loved it! And this blog is about sharing my art, not my lesson ideas haha. So, I bought acrylic paints and paintbrushes and got to work. When everything was complete, I had them all laminated and then I attached them to dowels. Each picture was made within a 12x12 inch sheet of paper, so they're pretty good size. I'm especially proud of this one because I had never really gotten into using paints before, and I was able to get pretty good results with very cheap materials :) 

Babysitting Alien and Scribble Drawings

Ok. So this little treasure tells very little about my abilities in drawing, but gives a little insight into what I get to do when I work. For the time being, my work is babysitting, for three different families of girls. One of the girls I babysit for, K, is almost just like me when I was younger, except a million times more disciplined and she has way more potential to be anything she wants to be "when she grows up." So K and I get along really well, and we spend a good chunk of our time doing crafts or drawing or, more recently, writing. Plenty of times we've sat around wondering what to do, and then one of us will think of an awesome idea. I forgot whose idea it was to do this project, but regardless: we folded the paper into thirds, one person drew the head and the legs (K, in this picture) and the other person drew the body (me!). The trick is that you can't see what the other person drew when you draw your piece, and obviously you choose to make the feet a different style from the head.

Another awesome game we like to play is called scribble drawing. You have to be just the right person do be a scribble drawer, I've only really met one other person who can do it the right way. Basically, you do a small, continuous scribble on a piece of paper, and then the other person looks at the scribble and tries to find a picture in it. You only add a few lines or curves, you don't draw over the scribbles to make a new shape - you have to use the scribble as a part of your drawing. It's super awesome! Here, I'll have my husband give me a scribble real quick so I can show you:

So here's the scribble my husband gave me. I made him redo it twice because he added extra lines and it's important to have a CONTINUOUS scribble :) haha

My first inspiration occurred when I turned the page a little. 

I added some hands, feet, and a head and here is a leaping man. 

Using the same scribble, but erasing my additions, I made this: 

A shocked bunny. 

A jovial seal. 

And finally: an ugly cat. 

Obviously these are pretty ugs, but you get the point - it's a great way to stretch your creativity and it's really really fun. All of my preliminary training for this game came from countless hours hanging my head upside down over the side of the couch, staring at the ceiling and making pictures from the popcorn paint as a child. Now my ceiling is made up of smooth square tiles with one chipped corner.

Please enjoy playing your own scribble drawing games - it never gets old because you'll never have the same scribble twice! (Well, unless you draw in pencil and erase your marks like I just did... sorry, I'm too literal). 

Blog

So I decided that I need a therapeutic outlet for myself and my creativity, and decided a blog would be the best avenue for now. I've started writing a children's book and I'm currently doing the illustrations, but I'm just not sure publishing is anywhere in the near future. In this blog, I plan to share drawings, paintings, writings, and other various creations of mine one way or another. Clearly, it'll be very different than seeing any of these things in real life... but I've gotta get it out of ME one way or another :)

Let's start with this one, shall we?

Sorry about the quality, quite a few of these in the beginning have been taken with my cell phone since it was all I had before I had to get rid of the "piece" one way or another. This one is clearly two giraffes, a mama and a baby. I made it while babysitting a few years ago, the drawing that is. Then I used mod-podge and cardboard and newspaper scraps. I've always liked it, but either my mom or husband made me throw it away at one point haha. I like drawing giraffes, and as you can see - my stuff doesn't look like real life. Oh well.