Chihuly Art

My son has been very interested in Dale Chihuly's art lately. Not only does he create amazing glass work but he also wears an eye patch which makes him extra cool to a 5 year old boy. This week I thought it might be fun to do a version of Chihuly art at home. The kids took sharpie markers and plastic silverware and cups and made patterns on them. Next, I put them in the oven at a low temp to melt them like a shrinky dink. They wiggled and curled in the oven and turned into fantastic organic shapes! Then we put them together with pipe cleaners! The pictures don't show them off as great as they are in person! 

Storing Your Childs Art

I have so many great works of art from my kids that I want to hang but don't often have room. I came across this great post on ways to display and/or store your child's artwork at Cool Mom Picks.
There are great ideas here that are not only perfect for storing and displaying artwork but also for gifting some of the masterpieces to grandparents!
Check it out here!

Shape Witches

The kids have been practicing cutting shapes lately. This project is a fun one for the October holiday. I read the book There was an old lady that swallowed a bat before we started. Then we got out a bunch of colored paper. The kids chose which colors they wanted to started with. Next, they cut a bunch of different shapes. Then they eyes, nose, mouth and ears on the pieces of paper. After that they glued it together... and the silliness started!
They giggled like crazy when they put these together!

Make Your Own Liquid Watercolors!

I saw this post on Crafting a Green World and had to share! How many dried up markers do you end up tossing out? Here is a great way to renew/reuse by making liquid watercolors with just rubbing alcohol and dried up markers! I am going to start a "dried up marker collection box". What a great learning experience for the kids! I bet you could color mix too..... oh the possibilities!
Ok, click here for the post! 

Halloween Poetry and Art

 There is a great book called Hallowilloween: Nefarious Silliness from Calef Brown. It has some wonderful Halloween poems with amazing illustration to inspire the best Halloween art.....

Rainbow Nature Walk

We are loving this weather and the beautiful changes in scenery. It is so colorful and with some of the leaves dropping we are able to see new things through the trees!

Here is a little art we did from our rainbow nature hunt. We searched for each color of the rainbow in a nature item. Blue and purple were the most difficult but we did find little berries that were blue and a lovely deep purple leaf.

Fall Reflections

The Fall colors are ammmaaaazzzing this week! The kids and I have been enjoying nature walks and bird watching on the lake. There hasn't been much wind this week which makes for calm glassy reflections of beautiful colors. The view has been great inspiration for reflection watercolor paintings!

 

The colors outside have been inspiring for more than just painting on paper too......