I am soooo excited!

For a long time, I have wanted to open a shop on Teachers Pay Teachers. Well, I did it! I uploaded my very first kit today!
My Store!

I am hoping I did everything correctly! Here is a link if you would like to check it out- If you have never signed up for TPT, feel free to use this link to do so! 

Sign up here!

It is an amazing site that has lots of freebies as well as paid resources for teachers.  I am planning on creating lots of items to help art teachers, and regular classroom teachers who teach art. I was a regular classroom teacher for 8 years, so I understand where they are as well. :)

There are so many things to do with your students to help them learn through art. After all, I only see my students once a week- I don't mind their classroom teacher being creative with them the remainder of the time!

Let me know what you think- and if you have any ideas, let me know!

Laurel Burch Equine and Celestial Drawings

If you have never done a project on Laurel Burch, I encourage you to do so. Her art is so colorful and happy, and FUN! Her story is very encouraging as well. I have done her cats before, but this year, I decided to do something different with the older kids. The lesson was about color and line, of course. I showed them step by step how to do the horses, and some of them did a great job! The 4th graders did the horses-

The 5th grade did the Celestial drawings-

You can find a slide show of her work here It is a great project, and several parents put the finished projects in frames!

Colorful Owl Pastel Drawings

Last year, I attended the Create 2012 conference in Murfreesboro, TN. Several of the teachers from my town attended, and it was great. My favorite class was one on drawing animals, and the class description said something about being "based on the style of Laurel Burch". Well, since I am a big fan of hers, mostly because of all the things she had to overcome in life, I attended. The lady was so sweet, but basically she showed us her work, and let us have at it. That was fine with me! I was ready to just make something. Having an obsession with owls, which dates back to the 70's when they were first in style, I naturally chose to draw one. This is what I came up with-

I took it to school, and the kids went wild. I don't know if it was the color, or the glitter, or what, but they BEGGED to make one. They did a great job. I believe these are from the third graders-

Pretty cute, huh?

Our tribute to Vannoy Streeter

There once was a really cool artist who lived in Shelbyville, Tennessee by the name of Vannoy Streeter. My grandmother bartered with him for some artwork, with her artwork, which were ceramics. Anyway, I always thought they were the coolest things. They were sculptures made out of old wire coat hangers. I didn't know until years later how popular these are. Apparently, Mr. Streeter was one of the most famous black folk artists in Tennessee. Here is an article from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: Vannoy "Wireman" Streeter (1919-1998) By Susan W. Knowles , Middle Tennessee State University Self-taught sculptor Vannoy Streeter was known as “Wireman” because of the fanciful creations he fashioned from coat hangers and metal wire. Best known for his depictions of the Tennessee Walking Horse, Streeter also created scores of other images using wrapped and twisted wire. He particularly enjoyed making things with moving parts, such as cars with steering wheels that turned front and rear axles, airplanes with twirling propellers, motorcycles with kickstands, and eighteen-wheelers that actually rolled. Another favorite subject was music. Streeter created numerous figures of Elvis Presley playing guitar, and stages full of the Tina Turner Revue and James Brown with his band. By the time of his death in 1998, Streeter had gained national exposure. He participated in the National Black Arts Festival in 1990, and his work attracted collectors from around the United States. Born in 1919 in Wartrace, Tennessee, Streeter moved with his family to what would later become a Tennessee Walking Horse farm. At the time, owners were still training their mixed thoroughbreds to prance in front of buggies. The oldest of six brothers, he learned the horse grooming and training business from his father. When the first Walking Horse Celebration was held in Wartrace, Streeter was there to observe the high-stepping front legs and sliding, low-slung back legs that created the characteristic rocking gait. After the Walking Horse Celebration moved to its current home in the county seat of Shelbyville, Streeter took special pride in the fact that African American trainers helped develop the Walking Horse style and that champion horse “Strolling Jim” was from Wartrace. Nearly every wire Walking Horse that Streeter created carried an African American rider outfitted in top hat and tails. In a 1990 interview with folk art collector Dan Prince, Streeter recalled as a youngster fashioning toy wagons, horses, and mules from baling wire: “I saw a horse and wanted one so I took wire and made me one.” He also remembered winning a first grade art contest with a wire airplane. Seeing toy trucks, cars, and trains in the store windows of nearby Shelbyville prompted young Streeter to make the toys his parents could not afford. He continued to make wire sculpture using brand-new coat hangers (which he purchased by the five-hundred-box load) for most, bracing wire for the large-scale pieces, and fine-gauge wire for detail work. Starting with a pair of regular pliers, he would bend wire around a straight hanger bottom, snip it with wire cutters, then form and shape it with needle-nose pliers, adding thin wire for details. When he was commissioned to make twenty-five horses as awards for the Dixie Jubilee horse show in Jackson, Mississippi, Streeter, ever the inventor, claimed never to have made the same piece twice. He also created a customized set of camels for a Kentucky high-school basketball team and made numerous Walking Horses, race cars, wagons, and mules. The largest piece he ever made was a life-size Walking Horse and rider, for which a protective storage shed was built to ensure its annual display in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Because several of the kids at our school live in the same area Mr. Streeter lived in, this story is awesome for them to hear. I love to give them examples of successful people who come from the same place. :) Since wire hangers are REALLY hard to bend, and cut, I bought some aluminum wire from DickBlick. The kids were able to bend the wire into various shapes and create some really neat things. I did this project with the 5th graders. The first thing I did was cut the wire into pieces for each student. They each got 1 pc. that was about a foot long. I showed them how to bend the wire into shapes. I drew some examples on the board of things that would be relatively easy to create. Fish, flowers, hearts, etc. I told them they could draw it out first if they wanted, or just try it freehanded if they wanted. This was really an experiment for me, to see how it would go. I made them spread out all over the room so they wouldn't poke each other. Thank God there were no injuries! Here are the best ones they came up with- The adorable little snail is my son's.

Toilet Paper Roll Pinterest Project Completed!

I pin a lot on Pinterest. I mean ALOT! There are so many cool ideas out there- and sometimes the ones I think I thought up are on there already! So funny- anyway, here is one that turned out really cute. Our school is at like 95% poverty level, so we do a lot of recycled projects. I go to this awesome place every year called ZeroLandfill Nashville. Lots of designers and interior decorators donate old samples they have, and people like me (teachers, scavengers, hoarders-you know) grab it up. I use those materials throughout the year for different things. I will have to look through my thousands of pics to find some of those projects to share. The following project uses something we all have access to (for the most part- lol) toilet paper rolls. I had so many of these things that I had to do something with them. I found this on Pinterest: Sorry-I don't know who to give credit to this awesome project- I will have to go back and look. This is what some of the kids made- Keep in mind, this was a one day, 40 min. project. This class was a week ahead, so I had to find something quick and easy...and they loved it! I think next year we will do this but turn it into a mixed media project- adding model magic, or fabric. Fun!

Our Art Show was a success!!!

This year our county's art show was a great success! We had around 1500 people show up, I believe. The kids love to come and see their work displayed. I had a tv with their stop-motion animation films playing, and a table for the 3D work. Here are a few shots of the work. Because there are so many teachers displaying work, our amounts are limited. I am considering doing a smaller show at our school around Christmas just for my kiddos...