Jacob's Ladder toys

I have always been fascinated by these toys and when I learned how simple they are to make I knew we needed to do this in class. We used a small staple gun to staple the ribbon onto the blocks we had painted. Oh, the power of the staple gun! Everyone got a kick out of using it!

A few weeks ago we made designs inspired by Zentangle. Then each class combined their designs into one design. Then we printed out a transparency of each class design and used those to expose the emulsion on silk screens. One per class. We'll use the silk screens next week to print T-shirts.

Painting Jacob's Ladder Toys

While they took turns throwing pots, everyone else painted their blocks for their Jacob's Ladder toys. They were coming up with very creative ways to paint.

The annual throwing of pots!

This is definitely the favorite project! It's so fun to get messy and really get into creating something.

Zentangle inspired designs

This was our first project. These are designs inspired by Zentangle. These looked so great at all skill levels. We'll be using these designs to make silk screened shirts soon.

It's almost summer! That means it time to sign up for art classes again! I have some great plans for this summer. In June will be learning how to do art inspired by Zentangle, we'll be silk screening T-shirts with our own designs, we'll be making Jacob's Ladder wooden toys, and, of course, we'll be making pots on the wheel.  In July we'll be learning some watercolor techniques when we paint a landscape with trees. We'll make wind chimes with clay and we'll be making a book that we can put pictures in. We'll also learn some simple techniques for making pop-up books and cards. As always, we will be using quality materials in everything we make.

Classes are once a week for one hour and the classes are no larger than 6 people. That means there is plenty of individual instruction. You can choose a class time on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. The times are: 9:30-10:30 AM, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM, 1:00-2:00 PM, and 3:00-4:00 PM. The classes are for children ages 6 (or those who have at least attended Kindergarten) and up.

I would love to hear from you! You can email me at mrsdsouth@gmail.com.

Thanks!
--Deborah

Handmade Books

This was our last project of the summer. For the cover we used the handmade paper the students made in June. Then we stacked everything together and used Japanese binding to sew our books together. Using the awls to poke holes was the hardest part and everyone managed to do it. They turned into really nice looking books.