Happy holidays and rigid heddles

Visited my friend this past Sunday. We get together once a month to drink coffee, eat banana bread and knit. She wanted to learn rigid heddle weaving, so I let her borrow my RH loom last month and said if she needed any help, I'd work with her. Well, she did need help. When I got there, she had put the warp on the loom backwards (front of work tied to back apron  and vice versa). She was sort of almost in tears. I said no worries, we'd fix it. We took the warp off the loom and turned the loom around. So... in answer to a question on Facebook, on the rigid heddle page, this is how I tie little bundles to the back beam bar. We took small bundles of the warp, being careful to keep them the same length, tied them together, then lashed them to the back beam. These are thicker bundles than I would do, but that was her preference. Now, you can also tie them directly to the bars themselves, but I don't like the Ashford bars. They are rectangular, flat pieces of wood instead of dowel shape. I don't like this design at all, thus the bundles. Then of course she will sley the warp, and tie the ends to the front apron bar directly. 

This is an odd sort of way to warp I suppose, but I am used to warping an 8 shaft, 10 treadle monster of a Kessenich, so warping a RH is no where near as time consuming and tedious. Therefore, I don't mind taking extra time doing it. 

Another odd thing she did was this... instead of using brown wrapping paper or butcher paper, she used a bunch of cut up little cardboards. See how uneven this can be? You can use flat, narrow, even sticks, but these are totally uneven and cardboard has too much give. So we got rid of that hot mess too and luckily she had some brown paper on hand so we rolled the warp onto the back beam, tucking the brown paper in and around as we went. Hopefully, she will call me if she gets in a bind next time. 

And now... Happy Holidays from the kids of Messy Art! 

The Thanksgiving break

...where I didn't do a whole heck of a lot. I was determined however to rest. I really felt I needed it.

Also, a bit of time was taken up with Christmas decorating. I LOVE Christmas and really love decorating my house. Above is my snowman collection...

and the Christmas village over the TV and the constant hum of football (just kidding Jer). The tree is up as well but I didn't take a picture yet.

This week in art class we looked at the works of the British sculptor, Henry Moore. I gave each child a palm size lump of air dry clay and, after showing them pictures of his work, asked them to make their own abstract sculptures. I told them that I didn't want to see any bunnies or kitties or anything like that and if I did I would smash them mercilessly! Bwa ha ha ha ha!!! I told the kids that I didn't want to be able to recognize their pieces at all. ABSTRACT!

Ok, I forgot my camera and had to use my iphone, which only seems to be able to upload pictures sideways. But they're abstract... does it really matter? Kidding. Anyway, I'm well aware of what terracotta looks like, and let me tell you, it's about as messy as it looks, but the store was out of white air dry clay.

Hmmmm.... this one is interesting.

Now I know this is not abstract, but it is gorgeous. The girl that made it is about 13 and a sort of  "at risk" kid .... she's at risk of choosing men poorly the rest of her life because the boys she hangs out with are total turds. Anyway, I praised her for this and told her she should keep up with clay and sculpting. You could tell by her reaction that she doesn't hear praise much and she was very proud of her piece. And it is experiences like this that remind me why I do what I do.

Things back to normal

The wedding is over and the kids are off on their honeymoon to New Orleans. Remember these little guys? They were the cake toppers. The kid's wedding theme was natural Florida and I got this idea from a picture on Pinterest where someone had done this with deers. Very cute. So I thought well, why not white herons?

In art class this week:

We did abstract scribble painting. We took paper and drew a scribble design. Then using tempera paints, we painted in our drawings. Mostly I was trying to show the kids how to make secondary colors from primary colors and how to blend on the paper.

I like the chalkiness that tempera gives.

This is my favorite. We were coming to the end of our lesson and this girl was only half finished so she folded the page over, pressed the painted side against the other and got this result. Beautiful! Happy accidents!

Skulls

In Messy Art:

We did a Dia de los Muertos craft this week. We used Creatology sticky back foam sheets. You draw your picture out in pen. Then you go over it again and press hard with the pen to leave an indent in the foam.  

I then showed the kids how to apply the paint lightly (non-diluted tempera), holding the brush almost parallel to the foam sheet so as not to get too much paint in the groves of the drawing. This is good for teaching kids how to control the paint brush and about brush strokes.

Then we decorated with sequence, glitter, feathers and pompoms.

  

I like the one on the right... not sure what he's supposed to be but he's waving at you. 

straw art

In Messy Art this week we painted with straws

For some reason, this picture just doesn't want to be right side up

I really like the way this one came out. He painted it on top of paper towels and got some of the texture from the towels in there.

We just mixed some water with tempera paint, giving it the consistency of milk. Then you take a straw, dip it in the paint, and put your finger over the other end of the straw. This creates a pipette effect. Then you drop the paint collected in the straw tip onto the paper and blow. I love to watch the kids get so lost in the process. They really did with this one. We listened to Getz and Gilberto while we painted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2xOgQi_H_A

Got to get outside once in a while

We have been doing a bit of gardening lately. Decided to build a combination butterfly/bee and veggie bed next to the back porch.

We'll be adding more pollinator plants, and the back of the bed will be for pole beans and banana peppers.

Looks like someone has already moved in.

Farmer Jerry watering the new bed.

Some random sorghum growing. We had a bird feeder in the back and I have a feeling one of the birds planted this... if you know what I mean.

And lastly, the mint, parsley, etc. is doing well despite the temps in the upper 80's.

Haven't been doing much in the collage realm lately. I've been busy learning a new weaving technique; Andean pebble weave on the inkle loom. And I finally understand it! Woooo hooo!! I've been watching the video, Supplementary Warp Patterning by Jacquetta Nisbet and at first she might as well have been speaking Greek. But it slowly became clear.

This is also a good source for learning this technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox1cD_9MnIk

This past Monday in Messy Art: Friendship bracelets.

Apparently I was the only dinosaur in the room who knew how to do macrame or even knew what macrame even is. The mothers looked at me like I had sprouted another head when I asked them if they had ever made macrame plant hangers. Ok, I'm a relic but the kids loved it once they got the hang of it.

Materials: yarn, bull clips, masking tape and a fun pencil (which the kids got to keep).

You loop the yarn over the pencil like you are casting onto knitting needles like so... two colors:

Then really it's just a series of square knots alternating back and forth. Make a number 4 - over the tail - under the middles - and through the 4. Simple right?

I learned to do this when I was 12 and loved it. The kids of course picked it up quicker than the moms.

Well that's all we have for now, right Levon? ....  Levon? ...

I want my hat back

I have this hat ... yes this is art related. I love the way my hat fits and all that, but I just couldn't deal with the Jimmy Buffet hula girl silly stuff on the front. Not a big fan of Buffet, but even less so since he's trying to build some eyesore, Margaritaville resort, on Hollywood Beach. Because we don't have enough eyesores or people on Hollywood beach now. Ok, sorry, I'm going into a rant... first of all Margaritaville? Is this Mexico? Is it even the West? No, it's Florida. I'm tired of people always trying to turn Florida into something else. Hula girls? Really, do we have those here? Lived here my whole life and pretty sure I've never seen hula girls running around. That's Hawaii.

So I wore the silly hula girl Jimmy Buffet affair to the St. Patrick's day parade and total strangers were yelling "Beachside!" at me, all friendly and stuff. I had no idea at first what the hell that meant but figured it out. It was my silly hula girl hat. Beachside must be a nickname for the coming eyesore. So I thought, oh hell to the no! Then I thought, ... hey, I'm an artist. I can change this. My new and very cool hat.

No coocoo surf company names, because I'm bitter against that crap too. $48 for a pair of flip flops... really? Just body surfing... you, your body the ocean and no marketing. Amazing what a little paper and matt medium can do.


Messy Art!

We made chickens!

This one is amazing!

These are plastic eggs, tissue, feathers and eyes. At first I was thinking about letting them use real eggs and blow the stuff out of the middle. Then I thought, am I nuts? First of all, it's gross. Second it will take them days to blow all that nasty out of there. Pretty sure I remember doing this as a kid and I think I broke a capillary in my face trying to blow all that icky egg out.

I try not to give the kids too much direction. I always tell them to be as creative as they want. Love seeing all the different results.

Spring has sprung

I'm a little behind on posts. This was last week's Messy Art project. Windsocks. We wanted to do something to usher in Springtime.

 I use the larger construction paper so we cut those in half and painted (tempra) designs and pictures on the body of the sock.

Then we added tissue paper streamers.

This little pillow is about the only thing I've gotten to this week. I bought this fabric remnant a while back and did the butterfly silk screen design on there. Then just ran it up on the sewing machine that I'm no longer frightened of, and ta da! A little pillow for the Florida room couch.

Still plugging away on the rug and ran out of cotton yarn for the piece on the inkle so need to go to the store I guess.

I am really jonesin' for a road trip and homesick for N. FL, but just can't get away now, so I made a big old pot of collards and watched a DVD last night instead and it was so awesome. My life as a turkey...filmed in south central Florida. Part of the PBS Nature series. It was just beautiful and so spiritual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK8UQ4Z52KQ