Beautiful mixed media baubles

Beautiful Baubles for Fifth Grade | tinyartroom

Make a simple mini book

Melted Crayon Art

I have to say at the outset that this is not my idea - it is all over Pinterest and other crafty sites.

Most people line their crayons up very carefully in a straight line but my daughter wanted something more 'free' so ours is quite random.

We also decided not to let all the colours run off the canvas so the finished piece is more minimal than most.
I am hooked and want another go!

This is a great project to do with your children (over 8 I think). You get to use a hot glue gun and hot air - either from a hair-drier or hot air gun which is fun for all of us. I did this very much as a joint project with my daughter, sharing the creative decisions was really good, and very interesting for me as I curbed my artistic control tendencies!


What you need:

• Crayons
• Good glue (I used a hot glue gun)
• Hot air (hair drier or hot air gun)
• Canvas
• Splatter mat or newspaper

What to do:

• Cover the floor with the newspaper - there will be splatters and dripping wax
• Line up the crayons along the top edge of your canvas and experiment with how you order the colours
• Glue the crayons in place
• Support the canvas at an angle with an easel if you have one or just prop it up against the wall
• gradually heat the crayons til they start to sweat and then work on a few crayons at time as they start to drip
• Enjoy yourselves! The moment the crayons start to drip is ridiculously fun :-)

Next time I will use more colours and pack them in more closely, I will also melt more of the wax and fill the canvas with more colour.
After more experimenting I intend to stick to a smaller range of colours and also make more deliberate pictures like these:

Source: i.imgur.com via Vuka on Pinterest

Source: media-cache8.pinterest.com via Elia on Pinterest

And it looks amazing on black!

Source: stressure.wordpress.com via Lindsey on Pinterest

Star trails

Star trails (link)



These long exposure photographs are amazing and make me wonder if Van Gogh could see things the rest of us can't

Easter Rocky Road

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened

100g dark chocolate
150g milk chocolate
broken into small pieces

4 tbsp golden syrup

2 tbsp cocoa powder

400g Mini Eggs

100g mini marshmallows

200g shortbread biscuits, broken into small pieces

One packet of pink wafers, cut into thirds.

Method

Line a 20cm square cake tin with baking parchment – or china dish, it really doesn’t matter!

VERY gently heat the butter, chocolate, syrup and cocoa powder in a pan on a low heat – but don’t overheat the chocolate, you’ll ruin it!

(you are supposed to place them in a small glass bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, but it’s too fiddly for me!)

Stir with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are melted and the chocolate mixture is smooth and glossy.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Stir in the biscuits, pink wafers and marshmallows.

Pour the mixture into the tin, cover with mini eggs.

Leave to cool for 2 hrs.

Remove from the tin and cut into squares.

DrawSomething - part 2

You see I really can't resist this game, but I shall have to stop this and get down to work tomorrow: holiday and illness over. These are all drawn on my HTC phone.
Here are my next few favourites:

DrawSomething

I'm fairly addicted to 'Draw Something'
I have drawn over 500 pictures for people in 2 weeks - sounds bad when you look at like that..., I have been in bed ill so I could do little else.
Anyway, now I am feeling a bit better I decided to try a bit harder with my drawings.
Here are my first attempts, I'll post more if I do some good ones.
Drawing something for someone else and not just your sketch book sheds a different light on things. I know I approach the drawing quite differently - perhaps I shouldn't. What is the point of drawing if not for an audience at some point?

Now I committed my first attempts to the blog, I think I will try even harder in future so I can show progression!

Two Girls Being Crafty: Spring Scrapbook Paper Tree

WOW!
I know what I'm going to do with my twigs when Easter is over!

Two Girls Being Crafty: Spring Scrapbook Paper Tree: Hello fellow crafters! Tristin and I were invited to be today's featured guest blogger over at Everyday Mom Ideas ! We were thrilled with ...

Easter Tree

For the last couple of years I have seen some lovely Easter displays in school - a compliment to the displays depicting story of Jesus' last week from Palm Sunday to Good Friday and an addition to the celebrations of Easter.
I thought if Christmas can have a tree, Easter should too.
Here's mine - apple tree prunings and eggs from Poundland and Lakeland. I should have decorated my own - but it's a start!

Varjak Paw

The cat that must learn to fight! A rather fab childrens novel, and an engaging cover too. I made this version on my phone.

Egyptian Dancing

Here I am with Anita and Christina in October last year at an open day for Longdean Sports Centre.

Read the story in the Hemel Gazette

Improve your photography with classical art.

click here for the tutorial at unfocused brain.com

This technique is so easy and so effective - for extreme changes but also for subtle changes to portraits and holiday snaps which don't quite have the impact you hoped - without endless hours of editing and creating multiple layers and masks.

Open the picture with the colour scheme you like into photoshop, let's call it 'art'

Open the picture you want to change, we'll call it 'portrait'

Go to 'image / adjustments / match colour' select the 'art' picture from the spurce drop down menu and fiddle with the settings.

Have a go and have fun!

 Here's a picture of me before a after a 'match colour' process with "L'Olivier" by Georges Braque.

"Stained glass" paintings

“stained glass” painting | happy hooligans
These paintings by little ones are wonderful, and easy too!

Sketch and draw

Not satisfied with a pastel drawing I did, I tried again. This time I finger painted on my phone with 'sketch and draw'. Its pretty effective and will even replay a movie of your picture as your create it. If I can capture the video, I will blog it.

On the way home

Using photostory 3
Have a little look at my photostory of a scene from Jill Murphy's 'On the way home'
I say in the clip that Dorothy is the voice of Claire, but was unavailable at the time of posting!
The software is so simple to use!
On the way home - view animation on you tube

You too can fly!

We have lift off! (youtube link)
A fun, easy bit of video-trickery. It's easy but takes a lot of time and patience... the result is worth it though! Record a clip of someone jumping. Get them to jump around a room or across a park or garden. Using a movie editor, capture stills as your subject is at the top of each jump. Using animation software, like windows movie maker, put the still together into a short film. Hey presto - your subject is flying!

Ice cream or cupcakes?

Oh go on then, let's have both!
Did you know you can use icecream 'cup' cones to bake your cupcakes in!
How cool is this (I can say that, my daughter made them!