Hunt for Random Acts of Kindness not Pokemon

In my area, a new craze has caught on. Instead of catching Pokemon (which I'm not ashamed to say I do also), the big thing is to paint and hide rocks. Kind of like a scavenger hunt. At this point you're either thinking, "What?" or "Sweet. we play to", but hear me out. The point of this game is to spread cheer and joy within our community. You don't have to be a great artist to play and there's no age requirement. The rules are pretty simple:

• You can paint rocks, or not
• You can hide rocks, or not
• You can find rocks, or not
• You post hints to your rocks, or not
• You can share your designs within the social media group, or not
• If you find a rock:
• You can keep it
• You can take it and re-hide it somewhere
• You can leave it
• You can share it with others
• You can add rocks to it
• You can replace it with a different rock, or not

There are a lot of these groups around if you such local media for them. Type in your city and "rocks". Again, the point is to spread joy and cheer with others. In my area, people have said that this has helped them become closer as a family as they will now paint and hide and search for rocks together. Several others have also said its helped them with depression and anxiety. I know several families who have said its helping their autistic children communicate more.  And I think that's the best part. That this one simple activity by many random strangers is helping so many people in so many different ways. I am really glad and grateful to be a part of this. 

As such, I wanted to share it with all of you. Maybe you have hidden rocks or other treasures in your area. Maybe this is the first time you are hearing of it. Either way, I would love to see any rocks and/or treasures you make if you decide to play along with us in your own areas. 

Here are a few I have done and sent out into the world :)

I post more on my Instagram, check it out. :)

Valentine, You're Griffindorable!!

With Valentine's day fast approaching, we are hard at work making our valentines.  As we are pretty big Harry Potter fans here and with the anticipated new Harry Potter movie coming out in November (you can see a trailer for it HERE), Rini decided her valentines this year would be wands.

We printed the valentines on thick card stock and cut them out. Then punched a whole through each one and used string to tie them to the wands. You can get a set of your own awesome Harry Potter valentines at Art by STOWE.

To make your own Harry Potter wands you will need:

• Printer paper
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue sticks
• Acrylic or craft paints (we used black and brown but you can add other colors too)
• Marbles or gems (to add to the base- this is optional)
• Wooden dowels (this is optional but add support to the wands and makes them more sustainable)

Begin by taking a dowel (if using them) and placing it diagonally across one corner or a piece of printer paper. Grab the corner and place it on the dowel. You can tape it here with scotch tape if you want. Now roll the paper and dowel (as tightly as you can) until you get to the end of the paper. Once there, secure paper corner to the paper wand with a bit of hot glue.

If you aren't using a dowel, you will do the same process, just without the dowel. Start at a corner of your printer paper and roll (as tightly as possible) diagonally across the paper. Once at the end, secure with hot glue.

For both wands, you will need to fill the inside of the wand with hot glue.  If using the dowel, its easier as you have less of an area to fill. Fill both ends (and middle if not using the dowel) of your wand with the hot glue. Be patient as this part can take a while. 

If you wanted to add a gem or marble ot one end, now is the time to do that.

Once your wands are filled and dried, you can use the hot glue to make designs on them. Rini wanted them to look like wood, so we made a wood fiber like pattern on all the wands. You could though build up areas and make larger 3D decorations on wands.

We found that its best to do one side of a wand before doing the other as the glue is hot and doesn't always dry as fast as we would like. 

Next comes the painting part. Take your acrylics and paint the colors and designs you want on your wands. Since we wanted ours to look like wood, Rini first painted them brown. Once the paint had dried, we made a black wash to paint over the brown. The black wash will pool up in the crevices and create a sort of rugged and aged look, making the paper to look more like actual wood.  To make a wash, simply add a little bit of paint to a cup and mix with water. Start with a little water and add more until you get the desired liquid base. For us, we used a 1:2 ratio. 

Once they were dried from the wash, we added our cards and viola,  Harry Potter wands for all.

Happy valentine's Day everyone!

Yarn Block Printing

As it's February and National African-American History month, I thought I would post about one of the many famous African artists whom I adore. This project was done with my art class, but could easily be done at home as well.

William H. Johnson (whose bio you can read here)  painted the piece Going To Church. This piece was created using a technique called silk screening, which is basically a type of block printing done on cloth.

That got me thinking; I had been wanting to do a printing project, so this seemed like a good fit. One problem, I couldn't find the supplies I wanted anywhere. For those of you have better luck or an art store located by them, this would be a great project for Mono Printing using scratch foam. I realized after the project that scratch foam is basically like the Styrofoam containers you get take out food in sometimes. So you could cut those, clean them off and save them until you have enough to do the project. Which I love cause it cuts down on cost and is reusing materials. :)

So I had to come up with something else. That is when I came across this post at one of my new favorite blogs.  And viola. We have our project!

Block Printing

Supplies:

•  Yarn - (I had this at the house, but you can get yarn pretty cheap at Joann's during their sales. It can range from .99 cents to over 5$ depending on type and size of roll. We used both thick and thin yarn. I suggest the thin as it seemed to work better.)
• Wooden Blocks - (I got mine at Joann's, 3 for 1.99. You can scour yard sales though and pick up ABC blocks, which would be fun and allow for letter blocking as well. Building blocks can also be used if you have some of those. Or if you have the means of sawing, you can make your own. We also used wood circles.)
• Paint - ( I used tempura colors because they wash out well. Most block prints use ink, but for kids I think tempura paints work well. They can be found at Fred Meyers/Kroger's/ most art or craft stores and usually are about 3 to 4 $.)
• Paint Brushes - (these are handy in case you mix colors or just to paint the yarn)
• Paint Palette - (We used paper plates - one per table group to save on waste. You can use plastic palettes also if you have those.)
• Paper Towels - (something to dab off extra paint and to clean up any messes.)
• Paper - (I used card stock. It holds up well with tempura paints. You can use anything, just make sure that its thick. Printer paper probably isn't a good choice for this project.)
• Scissors - (to cut the yarn)

Addition supplies you may want:

• Smocks/Aprons - (to help kids stay clean)
• Newspaper - (to lay down in order to have less mess for clean up. You could also do your printing on Newspaper instead or with card stock.)

Instructions:

 

For this project we revisited secondary colors. I gave each table group the choice of which secondary color they wanted to use and then asked them which colors made that color. We had briefly discussed the colors at the carpet during our project discussion.

In our project discussion we talked about the artist and his work. How it was made using silk screening techniques and what they are.  One of the kids pointed out that the piece wasn't lined up properly because there's a chunk taken out of the sky where the tree should have been. :) I hadn't noticed that. It's amazing what they pick up on.

For the yarn you can either pre-cut it or do it when you pass out the supplies. Everyone should get a block, a piece of yarn, a paper towel, and paper. You can decide if they share paint palettes or get their own. Same with paint brushes.

Have kids wind their yarn around their block in whatever manner they want.  Then have them tie the string ends together or tuck them under the wound strings. Just be sure that string is tight.

For younger kids, its easier if they paint the string with paint brushes, instead of stamping. I had my class use the stamp method for the most part.

After they have paint, have them use a paint brush to mix it into the color it is supposed to be. Then they can paint or stamp their yarn block. When pressing the block to the paper, its best to be firm but not to slam it. We learned this the hard way. ;) Paint everywhere.

And that's pretty much it. It's more interesting if they turn the block one way and then another, so the image isn't the same through the whole paper. It's also more interesting to add focal colors here and there. So maybe a few squares of  a primary color to spice up the secondary colors. You could also turn this into a complimentary color project quite easily by having the few splashes of color be from the colors compliment.

Clean up for this project can be a bit cumbersome...you have been forewarned.  :)