Artist~Teacher... tishalou

I got the idea for this from one of the middle school teachers in our county – she was nice enough to offer her materials, ideas, samples to the newbies before she retired. I saw this little gem and I snatched it up – she even gave me the stack of astro brite paper to go with it. I have only taught it once – as a little extra at the end of the year to one 3rd grade class... See what you can do with it.

1.Fold the inside pages - 5 pages works best to form the star. This is made with regular copy paper – I used the astro brite neons. Your inside papers should be twice as large as your finished book. I made a large one for this sample. The finished book is 4” so the inside pages are 8”.

 2.Fold each page in half twice so your paper has a + on it with 4 equal squares. Then fold once diagonally. Push in the diagonal folds so they meet in the middle of the unfolded square.

4. Glue all the inside pages together. It is important that you have all the closed corners matched up and all the open “mouths” lined up – then you glue the outside of one page to the outside of the next page.
7. Now glue the top page to the cover and the bottom page to the back cover. The ribbon should wrap around the corner like this:
8.Tie your ribbon – flip the book around to open it into a star! I made this one with only 4 inside pages since I had alternating colors.

I made another one the size of the original one I had and added, yes some zentangles to it!! The inside pages are 3” - final book 1.5” It's so cute!

I did my drawings before I assembled the book – but you could work with it after assembly as well by folding it back and forth to get a flat surface to draw on.
Play around with some fun papers and see what you can come up with.. These would make great little ornaments – put a spin on the giving tree for the holidays!

Today is my last birthday... I am 39 :-)
Weekend recap:
Watched a combo of our 9U and 10U players play in a baseball tournament this weekend. They did not fare so well. Bailey did great (of course:).
 Funny sign at the field:

Still working on my master bath and purchased rugs, OMG can they be any more expensive?? ~ I also need some window treatments for the two small windows but that will have to wait for my summer camp paycheck!!

And of course I have been zentangling away. I made one for my hairdresser - I usually write her name all fancy on her tip envelop so I decided to make her a zentangle ATC instead:

I made it with the new Sharpie fine tipped pens I got this week. I also did some shopping for Bailey's birthday which is Wednesday 7/28. I need to go back to school so I stop shopping so much!
Here is another zentangle I finished last night. Not as happy with this one. I like the left side. maybe I just need to turn it a different way - turn your head for me.

And I finished a Gator's collage poster for the basement. For the previous 3 summers we followed the Fauquier Gators college woodbat baseball team. Local familes hosted the kids for the summer while they played. We had kids two years in a row from North Georgia College and one that was here both summers. Unfortunately they sold the team and it has left a big empty hole in our summer but I have lots of pictures and memories and friendships to get me through it. Bailey still calls them his brothers!
Bailey and I had some fun being goofy on the couch. Dad bought him a new flat brimmed Boston hat he is sportin'. I told him he could have it only if he didn't wear it sideways.

We are headed out to a yummy dinner at the new Longhorn steakhouse in Warrenton for my birthday - looks like the storm is brewing so we are going early. I hope the storm cools things off it has been sooooooooooo hot!

I treated myself to a little Amazon therapy recently and got this book: Totally Tangled by Sandy Steen Batholomew. I think it came up in a recommendation and I looked over the customer reviews to decide which one to get - there are a few versions: Zentangle Basics & Zentagle 2. I went with the most recently released. I finally got a chance to try it out on my trip to hang out with the art teachers on the river. Since then I have been tangling each night in bed while watching TV - and I finished this one during baseball practice:

Oh the possibilities!

All of the county buildings/schools are closed on Fridays in the summertime. So our camps only run from Mon-Thurs. On Friday we planned a nice little get together at one of the teacher's homes. She recently graduated from VCU and lives with her dad in Remington. http://www.remingtonva.org/ What an amazing place they have. It is right on the Rappahannock River and her dad is a real artist himself.

There entire property is filled with little gems and surprises all over the place. Windchimes, wire, stones, wood all purposely placed about the yard. I loved the staging table – where all the new finds seemed to be placed getting ready for where they will be wedged into the landscape.



 See my photo album on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72824&id=1320498810&l=d3057ebb2f

I taught the Middle School Summer Art Camp at Kettle Run High School from July 12- 15. Here is a re-cap...

Day 1

The metallic colors made some really nice effects.
Then we showed students how to make an accordion fold book that could hold their pinhole images. They cut out their paste papers to use as covers or as additional decoration.

Day 2
We worked with students in the darkroom to show them how to make a positive print from their pinhole negative.
Here are some of the students' best pinhole images:


We discussed Henry Moore and showed photos of him being inspired by rocks and bones. Students chose a bone they liked and drew it realistically. Then they drew it three more times until it was abstracted. From one of the 3 drawings they created a plaster sculpture using a newspaper armature.
Here are some drawings: Mine is on the left - student on the right.
I just love the finish she put on it.

Day 3
We took students to the American Museum of Natural History and the Brian Jungen show at National Museum of the American Indian. They had a blast – even in the rain! We ate lunch in the courtyard at the Hirshhorn since we would be out of the rain. Then we took a walk past the Henry Moore sculptures that were across the street. We stopped for a group shot:
Day 4
Finish everything day! We had students create one more new piece of art – the drawback to the field trip is less art produced but the kids enjoy it so much and they rarely get a chance to go anywhere during the regular school year we feel it is important to keep it in future camps.
Students chose a few items they liked from the bones – or from a new pile of shells and sea creatures. They must have been tired of the bones because all of them chose from the shells! They created a few thumbnails to create a composition they liked – then they enlarged it on 19x19 paper and painted with acrylics. The paints were very yummy and I really enjoyed this. Some students had a hard time with composition and benefited from creating the thumbnails.
here are some thumbnail/painting pairs: (mine is first and includes the original items)




I think this project is where I was of the most help to students. I worked with them to create the best composition with the items they had chosen. I pushed them to create more thumbnails until they were happy with the results and could see the difference between a strong and a weak composition.
Most of the afternoon we worked with students to finish up and choose their best work to go in the art festival which is in April.
Now I can start my summer ~ no more teaching until August 23rd!