Five Senses Self Portraits

Our class had some stickers donated to us;  they were stickers of eyes, ears, noses and mouths that were meant for putting faces on balloons.  

I thought that we could use them to alter our faces and make self portraits that have features to represent each of the five senses (which we had been learning about).  

The children painted the photocopies of their faces with vegetable dye, and when it was dry they chose stickers for each of the senses to add to their face, and placed them on as they desired.  

I also had them trace their hands and cut them out 

since there was nothing on the faces to represent "touch".  

This required a short "how to use scissors" lesson, but they soon mastered the complicated tool.  

I love the hands as an addition.  They became beards, hair, moustaches...

Some close-ups:

What amazed me was how much the "wacky faces" ended up perfectly illustrating the personality of the child who made it.  Haha!

The Sassy Little Craft Show 2012

Greetings!
Hope everyone is doing well. As we enter another season of holiday craft shows, we are here to offer you a late afternoon/early night of selling your crafty items at the Sassy LIttle Craft Show. Bring your friends and come enjoy some eats, drinks, and festive holiday tunes. We hope you will join us, and you can be sure we will be decking the halls with seasonal goodies!

Here is the call for entries for the Holiday edition of the Sassy Little Craft Show:

It's a Sassy Little Holiday Show!

Date: Sunday December 9th 2012

Place: The Central

603 Markham Street (Bloor and Bathurst, near Suspect Video)

Time: 3pm-9pm

Cost is $30 per vendor. Tables are available 2x2ft, each vendor will have approx 3ft, so displays need to be kept small. We suggest items under $50.

If you are interested in a table, send an email, with a short description, web presence and 3 pics to thesassylittlecraftshow@gmail.com

Deadline to apply is October 25

We will confirm participation by October Oct 29

We will have an invite posted shortly.

Take care and we look forward to hearing from you! Please feel free to pass this on to any of your sassy little crafting friends.

Re-usable Art Faces

Every year I take photos of each of my students to use in the class.  We stick photocopies of their faces on their books, cubbies, and folders so that they can recognize themseves and eachother as they are learning to read names.  I also use these photocopies of their photos for various art projects throughout the year.  

This year I used our face photocopies to make little art face boards for the kids to play with, based on an idea that I saw on Pinterest.  I backed them on bristol board, and I used some shiny, clear contact paper from the dollar store (it is adhesive on one side like a giant sticker, I believe it is supposed to be for covering books)

When you colour on them with water based markers, you can just wipe them clean.

The kids can trace and colour their faces any way they like, adding features or details.  It teaches them about the features and senses of the face, and their accurate placement on the head, but my favourite side effect is that it loosens the rules on portraiture.  We looked at the portrait art of Artists like Otto Dix, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Audrey Flack, and Pablo Picasso and many others to inspire us.

Then one day I had the idea to use plastiscene on the faces!  They became relief sculptures!

So funny.

Home-made Fingerpaint

My students burn through paint like there's a never-ending supply, and whatever we do have gets mixed into a sickly everycolourmixedup by the kids who will NOT BE BOXED IN by the tyranny of my one brush for one pot regime.

Solution?  Cheap, home-made paint made to order.

There are a million DIY fingerpaint recipes out there, so like I do with everthing, I took the good bits from all that I read and made one up.  I put about a quarter cup of flour in a large jar with some hot water and shook it.  Then I added about the same amount of white glue and shook again.  Then I added more water and shook again.  Once I divided it amongst my little containers, I added food colouring and mixed it.  I used concentrated colouring so my colours are vibrant.  Regular grocery store stuff would probably be more pastel.  I'm assuming more flour would make it thicker and more opaque.  Experiment!  What's the worst that can happen?

Anyway, pretty colours, works well, and basically free.  

Plump Lips sink ships

Two new little pieces from a series I'm working on incorporating fruity vintage furniture decals and beauty advertisement lips.  These are more contemplations of the idea of fertility and "ripeness" compared with the idea of vulnerability and decay through the grotesque details in the disembodied lips and the crumbling decals.

Banana Peanut Chocolate Cookies

I love cookies, and I LOVE my Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook.

Martha Stewart Cookies on Amazon

I love it so much that when my cat peed on it, I still used it for a year soaked with cat-pee smell.  Then I bought it AGAIN.  It's awesome, because the table of contents is pictures of cookies.  It's awesome because the categories of cookies are divided by texture (ie. "cakey and tender" or "chunky and nutty")
It's also awesome because it has so many types of cookies in it, that when I dream up my own cookie idea, I can usually find something similar to use as a jumping off point.  Because it is actually impossible for me to follow a recipe.  I just can't do it.

I dreamt up a cookie last week, inspired by some ripe bananas I found in the freezer.  Peanut butter banana cookies with milk chocolate chips... yum.  I didn't have time to make them last week, which was great, because it gave me time to have another idea: salted, honey roasted peanuts needed to get involved. *drool*

Martha has a recipe for Banana Walnut Chocolate Chunk cookies.  Walnuts became Peanuts.  Butter became peanut butter and coconut oil.  Wheat flour and rolled oats became Quinoa and rice flour, and flax meal.  I cut the salt and sugar down since the peanuts were sweet and salty.

I ate four already.

Jewels and Treasures at Chaton Beads

I found this awesome bead store on Queen the other day:

Chaton Beads

Somehow, despite years of dedicated Queen West browsing, I had never noticed it!  They had lovely beads, yes, but most exciting was their selection of jewellery making hardware in a variety of metals.  My favourites were the hoop earring parts perfect for beading;  I've been looking everywhere for hoops with gold coins, to replace one I lost.  I was able to make TWO sets of gold coin hoops, as well as a selection of other things, for a grand total of $26 in materials!

Chain anklet with a feather charm (they had a whole wall of chains)

I took one of the chains and hung some earring parts off of it.  I had two different lengths of these metal posts so I alternated.  I friggin' love this necklace.

A charm bracelet made with extra parts and charms I had lying around.

I don't see any reason to ever buy jewellery again.