Jam Packed with Jellyfish

Sometimes When I'm scheduled to do a birthday party the guest of honour has very specific requests for the theme of the lesson I must plan; How to Train your Dragon, Lego Friends, Ponies... Other times I get specific but very open requests for a theme. themes that direct me a certain place but allow me a lot of freedom to decide the focus.

My latest birthday falls in to the latter. When asked about the theme she would like the birthday girl just said she wanted something under the sea but not sea stars. A few years ago I devoted a week long summer camp to under the sea themes art lessons so inspiration was not difficult to find. Sometimes to get an idea all I need to do is look in the supply room at Artspace.  Mixed Media Creation parties at Artspace rely heavily on recycled and re-purposed materials for the lessons. The supply room is a treasure chest of saved materials from empty yogurt cups and magazine pages to piles and piles of caps and bottle lids.

I decided to use egg cartons and clear plastic water bottle lids to make a jellyfish garden under the sea. the results were... well I'll just let you look for yourself.

Parent's Night Out

Winter Night Portraits

Party Time

Every once in a while I'm asked to teach for a birthday party at Artspace. These can be huge affairs with ten plus children* excited to be together and rowdy and boisterous full of creative energy. They can also be a calm and gentle oasis (right up until the cake is consumed) full of creative energy. Did you see what I did there? Regardless of how many kids are at an art party that creative energy is there and it's brilliant to be a part of.
*or sometimes even less than ten kids; it's rare but it happens and this weekend was one of those small affairs

Artspace offers a few different options for visual art parties, Clay Creations, Painting and Drawing and Mixed Media Creations. Within those options we as instructors get to tailor create a lesson suited to the birthday honouree. Sometimes it's a specific theme; How to Train Your Dragon, Princesses, ponies... Other times the theme is wonderfully open and non specific; like the birthday I taught last weekend. When I met the VIP on a quick walk through and tour of Artspace a few days after booking her party I had the pleasure of being able to ask her myself what theme she wanted her party to be created around. Without hesitation I was told, "flowers" with a small caveat; there would be boys at the party so maybe they could create blue flowers for boys?'

I never shy away from knocking down gender specific bricks when the opportunity rears it's head. I was quick to exclaim that flowers are not just a girl thing or a boy thing and that I could come up with a project that would suit everyone. And with a little collaboration with the artist/administrator at Artspace I think we did.


 Whenever possible we like to use recycled materials for party projects, these made use of take out food containers (pizza boxes used for transporting sandwiches for my eldest child's hot lunch program) and egg cartons.

Every piece made by the party participants made use of the same materials. All of them look completely different and amazing.

Saturday Class: More Of The Same But Different

By looking at my posting history one would think that all I do is post new entries here.  This last week you wouldn't be far off. Starting a new blog is a slow process and I always find the beginning to be a little lonely with only one or two posts in the first week or so. I find writing posts to be a time consuming process.

Getting the ideas out, uploading images and deciding what to share take time, and then there's the proofreading process which I will admit I am a little out of practise on. I've been trying to go through each post before it goes live and again after I've had some time away to catch any mistakes in grammar or phraseology. Feel free to grammar police me if you see anything I miss.

Today is the last class of the week for me. So far registration has been a little slow for my parent participation Art Exploration class and today's Painting and Drawing Class has been cancelled for this term due to lack of registration. My preschool class, which has always been my fullest class is a go so I'm headed in to make more art with kids again today.

Usually I have a separate lesson plan decided for my Saturday classes but the leaf projects from earlier this week were so amazing that I'm going to keep that theme going. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing today, that should come on my walk to work while I collect leaves from the sidewalk and grass in the neighbourhood. Sometimes no matter how good a lesson I have planned is; I just feel the need to change things up. I know it's not the most ideal thing to share on a blog about building and sharing lesson plans but I think it's important to share the spontaneous side of my lesson building with you too. In fairness; the spontaneity usually fits within the same parameters. I'll expand later when I've shared today's end results.

I did mentioned the book I used with the lessons on Monday and Tuesday but I thought I'd share the cover and link here to Amazon in case you were interested. A Leaf Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas is beautifully illustrated with dreamy images and the text paints a word picture while being simple and poetic that using the book as a starting point for making art is almost a no brainer. The number of ideas I've gotten for lessons with this book, based on both the illustrations and on the words themselves is worth owning this book instead of hoping that it's available at the library when I need it.

Ohika Collages and Assemblage

Today was a Professional Development day in the school district and instead of regular Friday lessons, Artspace ran full and half day camps. As I mentioned in a post this morning I taught campers a mixed media art exploration class.

We used the art of Magaly Ohika as a jumping off point for the day's project. Students used chalk pastels. painted papers, fabric scraps and yarn to create Ohika-esque figures. A handful of my campers took the opportunity to create purely from their own imaginations. 

Campers are split into groups based on age; With my older campers we turned the collage project into assemblage with the addition of circuit boards to the composition. I loved seeing how and where each camper placed the board into their art. 

My younger group focused on the collage aspect of the project. The project was fill of colour, pattern and texture.