Posts Tagged ‘art’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Tips for Success with a Toy Pottery Wheel

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

toy-pottery-wheel

Here are some tips and a video for how to be successful when your children use a lousy toy pottery wheel (because all toy pottery wheels are lousy):

  • Start with a ball of clay the size of the pot you want. Place it on the toy pottery wheel. We used self-hardening clay because we had no money to get our pots fired professionally. (This is also why we were using a toy pottery wheel instead of a real one that was way out of our price range.)
  • Press the pedal to make the wheel go around. Don’t start crying because of the lack of power. I already told you it was lousy, so just make do.
  • Hold it firmly with wet hands so that you can shape it into a smooth blob. Feel it swooshing through your hands.
  • Stop the machine. Take your foot off the pedal. Push your fist into the blob, making a bowl.
  • Now press the pedal and make the spinner go around in circles again. Smooth it out with wet hands.
  • Keep your hands wet at all times.
  • It has to stay symmetrical, or it will start to fall apart. Keep it symmetrical and balanced all the way around. Smooth out the bumps.
  • When you’re finished with the pot, set it on wax paper to dry.
  • Wait at least overnight for the self-hardening clay to dry. Then use a black Sharpie marker to draw a pattern on it. Use black paint to fill it in. Let it dry.
  • Enjoy your finished pot. Give it to Grandma, who is the only one who will truly appreciate it.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Art, History | 8 Comments »

My Experience Basket Weaving

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

my-experience-basket-weaving

Weaving the sides of a basket is fun, easy, and beautiful, but let me tell you, the bottom is extremely frustrating. It’s a lot of work and comes out looking terrible, but at least it’s hidden by the beautiful sides. In this article I will explain our experience with basket weaving.

weaving-basket-bottom

I bought the basket-making kit at a Boy Scout store. (You can see the package in my YouTube video Ancient Egypt Unit Study. And if you look closely, you will see it in my Ancient Greece Unit Study, at the front middle of the floor. I was going to make it a standing joke to have the unmade basket during each time period, but I decided to just do it after all.) The kit gives you tiny directions that look so difficult that it took me three years to even decide to try. I was not looking forward to it.

weaving-basket

First you had to soak all the reeds in water to soften them up so that they wouldn’t be brittle. Then you have some reeds crossing each other like an X on the bottom. I weighed down the sides of the X with heavy books to keep them from moving. The thinner reeds get woven through in a spiral. I finally figured out that I needed to have my kid’s foot on top of the reeds that kept popping up on one side, and it went a lot better when we made the second basket.

weave-a-basket

You have to keep the unused reeds in a wet towel to keep them from drying out. After finishing the bottom of the basket, you soak the reeds, bend them upwards, and tie them with a twist tie. You keep weaving the sides of the basket higher and higher, choosing different colors of reeds as you go. When you come to the top, you loop the big reeds over in a loop.

to-weave-a-basket

Well, for the first basket, we forgot to soak the top reeds, so they broke. It was so frustrating. I finally grabbed a large pair of scissors and clipped off all the reeds that were sticking up. In other words, the basket can easily unravel now, so don’t do this.

The other basket tapered inwards because we forgot to take the twist tie off earlier. Oh, well. At least the sides are looped and won’t come apart.

how-to-weave-a-basket

In summary, after initial frustration with the bottom of the baskets, we had a lot of fun weaving the sides of the baskets, so I would give the entire experience a thumbs up.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Art | 7 Comments »

How to Make an Ancient Greece Foil Mask

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

ancient-greece-foil-mask

Since theater began in Ancient Greece, we decided to make some foil masks while studying Ancient Greece. We’ve made many masks over the years, mostly with card stock paper or pre-made blank masks from the craft store. This time we used aluminum foil.

How to Make an Ancient Greece Foil Mask

We folded the foil in half, and then in half again, to make a skinny line of foil. We cut out the eyes by doing a V-shape against the edge of the fold.

how-to-make-foil-mask

The children could shape the head any way they wanted. My kids all wanted ovals except for my oldest son, who designed his own shape with Sharpie marker. When he did this, the foil was only folded once, not twice.

markers-on-foil

We colored the foil masks with markers. My 5-year-old girl made two masks. Nobody wanted to make a sad face. (You know, the symbol of theater is two masks, one happy for comedy and one sad for tragedy.) Anyway, my oldest son’s mask looked like it belonged in Ancient Greece!

foil-masks

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Art | 6 Comments »

Embossed Christmas Ornaments

Monday, December 20th, 2010

embossed-Christmas-ornamentsembossed-Christmas-ornaments2Ever since I saw a random YouTube video about embossing, I became intrigued with the idea. I love doing crafts with earthy materials like leather, wood, or metal. I don’t particularly like crafts made out of paper (because they look like trash to me), although I sometimes do those with my kids because they love it so much. So when I ordered a roll of copper sheeting, I was excited to get started. Well, my first attempt at embossing was a failure. It just didn’t look right. I was expecting it to be spectacular, and my expectations were way off base. It’s just thin metal with grooves in it, after all.

embossed-Christmas-ornaments4embossed-Christmas-ornaments3Well, this time I tried making embossed Christmas ornaments. I went to a local craft supply store and got a box of 6 metal sheets. (The box is called “Metal Art,” and it cost me $12.99. It had a picture of metal sheets with a pattern of holes in them, like a design. It included a mallet that I never used.) Anyway, I realized that in my Play Doh supplies, I had some cheap plastic sculpting tools. So I grabbed one of those to make the grooves this time, instead of a ballpoint pen. The embossing sheets were thinner, so it was easier to make the grooves. I think the pen actually gave me more controembossed-Christmas-ornaments5l over the drawing than the sculpting tool did, so I recommend the pen after all. Except that you need the sculpting tool to puff out the lines on the other side, by going over the lines (beside the lines) to accentuate the lines. Just look at the YouTube video or my previous blog entry about embossing to give instructions on how to do it. Then we cut out the design and pierced a hole through it with an ornament hanger. It looked okay on the tree, I guess.

The silver-colored sheeting looks particularly bad, because it looks like you just put up some crumpled foil on the tree. So do I recommend this? Sort of. It was not until I did the star ornament that I truly thought it looked good, and even though I didn’t glembossed-Christmas-ornaments6ue it to velvet cardboard, that would have looked a lot better, because it would have given the ornament more substance. So, yes, you can make a professional, great-looking ornament if you have some black velvet cardboard to glue it to. I didn’t have the money to buy everything in the YouTube video, so I tried to made do with what I had.

Then it occurred to me that the sheet was thin enough for a bookmark. So my children made bookmarks with it. That was fun and actually looked good. So thumbs up for bookmarks with embossed metal! I wonder what else I can make with it?

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Fun Winter Activities | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »