Today I'm excited to share that I'm guest blogging over on the amazing Spoonflower! If you are not familiar, you really outta be. Spoonflower is the magical place where you can design and print your own fabrics, gift wrap and more. I've not ventured down that avenue (yet) but I have purchased fabric created by other creatives there. Case in point, this fabric from dmitriylo.
This was another dress I created at the start of the school year with fabric from Spoonflower. This fabric was created by seasonofvictory.
So hop on over to the Spoonflower blog and read more about the making of this dress...and how it helped inspire an entire art room transformation!
Hey, kids! Last Thursday night, my school celebrated their second annual Fine Arts Extravaganza with a musical performance and an art show. Our winter art show is with the fundraiser Artome. This is our second art show with Artome and I CANNOT brag on them enough. I swear, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just love how easy of an art show (and fundraiser) this is. You can check out last year's Artome art show here.
I shared quite a bit about this art show on my Instagram and I got a lot of questions. I thought I'd put them together in this post and hopefully help anyone out who is wondering about hosting an art show like this. Before I dive in, here's a short time lapse I made of the pre-show...that's right, this is the calm BEFORE the storm!
Here are some of the questions I got about out experience: Is this the only art show you do? No. We do a HUGE art show at the end of the year where every piece of artwork that every child has created is on display. I usually do two blog posts at the end of each school year highlighting both the 2-D and the 3-D portion of our art shows. You can check out archived art show blog posts by using the search bar on my blog and searching "art show".
What happens to the artwork that is not purchased? After the art show, it is removed from the frame and shipped back to me at no extra charge. In fact, there's no charge for this art show except for the cost of the frame. I'll get to that in a minute.
How much is the artwork, framed? That's up to you. Artome charges $19 for the framed artwork (and labor of framing and setting up the art show) and you simply up charge. I ask $25 and receive $6 per piece sold. Artome does not charge any additional fees. No charge for set up, shipping, paper, nothing. So, to me, the $19 is super reasonable.
So, how does this work? You start by contacting Artome either by email or phone. I'm a phone talker myself so I just give them a shout. I ALWAYS get someone immediately. Customer service is spot on. You start by setting up a date and time. About a week later, you'll receive your box of paper for the artwork to either be created or mounted on. The artwork is to be created on a 9" X 12" surface. The paper they send is about 12" X 18" with a space for you to add the child's name, title of artwork, teacher's name and school. Once all of the kiddo's artwork is created, Artome sends you a shipping label. Then you drop it in the mail at your local UPS about 2 weeks before your show. The day of the show, the crew arrives about 2 hours before show time to set up. YOU DO NOTHING! It's fabulous. In fact, the guys who set up my show, had it up in less than an hour!
Writing all of the names on the labels sounds like it would take for ever. What do you suggest? Last year, me and my parent volunteers collectively clocked 2 hours just writing out the names of my 350 students and the rest of the details on the forms. This year, I asked my school secretary if she could print me labels and she agreed. That shaved so much time off the process! I cannot recommend that enough!
If you don't create the artwork on the paper, how do you attach it to the paper provided? We used 3M spray glue. It is stinky but works great. I see you used chalk. Did that smear? How did you set it? My third graders used chalk and we had no issues with smearing! A mom volunteer sprayed it with hair spray and then we attached to the paper...no problems!
What if parents can't make it to the one night only art show? Can they still purchase? So, you get to decide when the art show ends. And, when it does, all of the artwork is packed up, framed, and shipped back to Artome. They do post-show sales for a couple of days after the fact. If you do have sales, they'll ship the framed work to you when they ship the unpurchased and unframed pieces.
What if more than one person wants to buy a piece of artwork? Like a grandparent or something? Artome can do a super high quality print of the original. Then they frame the print and it seriously looks just like the real thing!
What lessons did you do and how did you decide what to have the kids create? I actually did a repeat of my self portrait projects from last year! They were such a hit...I mean, parents love self portraits, right? You can find the complete lessons on all of our projects! First grade did Royal Self-Portraits, second grade did Super Hero Selfies, third grade created these Sandra Silberzweig-inspired Chalk Portraits and fourth grade did Romero Britto-inspired Selfies!
I think that answers about all of the questions I've gotten about this art show. I really love it and love this tradition of having a fine arts night. I do think next year, I'd like to add another element...but because we really go to extremes with our end of the year art show, it feel nice to have a beautiful art show that I'm not sweating bullets over.
I know at some art show that folks put together, they have places set up for kids and families to create. I'm intrigued by this idea...but with our musical program already taking place on the same night, I think adding that just might be too much. I'd love to hear from y'all if you do something in addition to sharing artwork at your school art shows.
I'd also love to hear if you've worked with Artome? What did you think? Such a great idea!
By the way, these are the chalk pieces...I think they look great, don't you? No smears. That also shows how carefully each piece is framed.
Thank you so much for letting me share my art show with y'all! It was such a fun night. We plan to use the funds raised to purchase clay and glaze for our spring projects. Y'all know how quickly 500 lbs of clay and a million bottles of glaze can add up!
Big thanks to Artome for making it a fun and EASY night for this super tired art teacher!
Why, howdy art teacherin' partners! I hope all y'all are having a relaxing weekend and bracing yourself as this coming week is FULL.MOON.WEEK. The one week a month that I believe we should have off. Call it mental health days. Call it "for the safety of the children" days...cuz the gone be a lil cray...and Ima hafta be a lil crazier. Which isn't all that hard to do, let's be honest. A couple of weeks ago, I shared with y'all a post titled Early Finishers, Part 1. This year, with my larger classes, I have noticed a huge difference between my students' work time. I've got some that finish in no time at all and do a fabulous job...and others that work at a snail's pace. I'm a snail's pace artist myself so I totally feel for those kiddos. I never want to rush them...but I also don't want my other students who are finished to simply have blocks, free draw or dry erase boards as their options. So I spent a LONG time thinking about this and crafting a system that I'm hoping works for me and my students. I'm also hoping this system allows for me to continue to teach the lessons and curriculum I do while allowing the kids time to explore other areas of art. Call it a directed art/choice-based art combo...or just call it doin' what works. Cuz that's what we do all day long. So, how does this work? Well, I created a video to explain it to my students. It's SUPER long-winded (there's so much to cover!) that I will definitely be sharing it in two parts. But, basically, the run down is all spelled out on the poster above (which I HAVE GOT to figure out how to make a downloadable PDF for y'all! I messed up on this post and need to fix it...and want to do the same for this poster. I'll try to have that done this coming week).
It's long...but I ALWAYS have so much to say (story of my LIFE!).
When kids are finished they are #1: NOT YELL OUT "I'M DONE!" Because me no likey. The first thing they have to do is clean their area. I've noticed that many times, when I make things available to the kids who finish early, they just stop, drop and go. Then I'm left being a naggy-nag callin' so-n-so back to their seat to clean their spot. No more. If you fail to clean then, sorry(not sorry), all options are removed and you are left with a dry erase board.
After their spot is cleaned, I'm requesting the kids write an exit slip...which we've only done a handful of times because I.SUCK. Seriously. I will sometimes do what you see above: quiz the kids as we are standing in line and jot down what they've learned. But now, I'm putting the ball back in their court. I'm simply asking for one sentence. That's not too much to ask...right?! (insert wink-y face emoji). By the way, if you wanna see what my room USED to look like before I went bonkers and tore everything off the walls this summer, check out this blog post.
If all of this is sounding vaguely familiar, that might be because I recently chatted about my early finishers in a podcast. BTW, did you know I have a podcast?! I DO! It's called Everyday Art Room and you can take a listen here.
SIDE NOTE: I got new flooring this week! YES, I'm so excited! When I shared the photo on my IG, many folks asked me where the flooring is from...right here. I also was asked how I was able to afford such flooring. Well, first of all, the flooring was about $120 so SUPER reasonable. Much cheaper and more sanitary than a rug. I do have some extra cash because of the fundraiser I do called Artome.
Okay, now that I've explained the first half of my poster, let's talk about the whole "check time and clips" dealio.
Okay...so my biggest struggle with early finishers is that there are some who literally have 2 minutes left of art class and will bust open the blocks, grab a piece of free draw and/or get a dry erase board only for me to be like: DUDE. YOU HAVE 2 MINUTES LEFT. They've got no concept of time based on my wall clock. But they do understand my timer...so I'm hoping this method of having the clocks on the bins works. An incentive for good behaviors is telling them how many clips they must have. I explained my clip system in this blog post and on this podcast. Fewer clips means fewer options.
I decided to limit the blocks/building area to 8 kids because the floor space doesn't comfortably allow for many more kids then that. I also decided to move the drawing supplies to the other side of this cabinet. This way, the kids who wanna draw, aren't stepping over the kids who are building. I'm fortunate that my art room used to be the school library: it's big and has wonderful shelving like this!
(Please try to ignore the bloodshed...I had a red paint bottle EXPLODE this summer and leave behind this mess. And, yeah, I've yet to clean it up. Raise your hand if you're surprised.) So now the kids have LOTS of drawing options: free draw, how to draw books, idea stick, Fashion Plates, stencils and observational stuff. For observation, I've got mannequins, blocks, dinosaurs, mirrors and vases with flowers.
Last option: the light table! My kids REALLY love this. Next up: I will share a follow up post to let you know how all this shakes out. I'm planning to add more: origami, fibers, collage...and maybe build in more time for these areas and not limit it to just early finishers. How do y'all handle those rascally early finishers?! I'd love to hear!
My second grade kiddos just finished up their Super Hero Selfies for their Artome art show! These 12" X 9" works of art were so much fun to make...and to see the finished result. I thought I'd share the process with y'all!
We began by chatting about Vincent van Gogh and looking at Starry Night. From there, we used our paper and my VERY favorite oil pastels (Sargent's florescent brand!) and created our skies. Because I have 30 minute art classes, that took one art class. The following art class, we added either all warm or all cool watercolor to our skies:
Y'all might have heard: I LOVE me some Crayola watercolor paint. I order the following and place them in each watercolor pan: magenta, red, red-orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue-violet and violet. I place them in that order so the kiddos know what colors they can use as far as warm/cool colors go. The following day, I busted out the tiny brushes and India ink for some cityscape painting:
We started by painting simple rectangle shapes. Then we added shapes on top of those like triangles, rectangles and squares. From there, windows were added. They really rocked these!
Many of my students sketched their cities out on dry erase boards first. This really helped them get comfortable with their ideas before attacking their paper. It did mean that some kids took two 30 minute art classes to complete their cities...I was okay with that. I never mind the kids going slower if it means they do their best and are proud of their work.
Once the paintings were complete, we could start creating our Super Hero Selfie! The kids were given a circle template...simply so we didn't end up with tiny little folks. The template really helped them gauge size and get a jump start. I did a quick demo on how to create a body by using shapes like a rectangle for the torso. I showed them how to draw stick arms and legs and turn them into THICK arms and legs. Some of us are still pretty skinny tho, ha!
LOTS of kids wanted to add their pets or their siblings as their sidekick...how cute! After drawing with pencil, tracing with Sharpie, the kids added color with color pencils. In all, that process took about two art classes as well.
Then the CAREFUL cutting began. Not gonna lie: some of us may have cut off limbs. No biggie, we simply glued them back in when we glued ourselves onto the background.
When coloring, we did talk quite a bit about color schemes. We chatted about the colors of Superman and Spiderman, Wonder Woman and the rest...they have about three specific colors. The kids were tasked with picking out 2-4 colors for their hero.
Weapons were not approved but shields were, of course!
And capes!
And disguises!
One thing that really helped was giving the kids an About Me super hero sheet. They had to come up with a name for their hero, what their special power was and how they make the world a better place. On that same sheet, they had to create a sketch of themselves as well as a sidekick.
I'm really excited about these and cannot wait to see them at our art show!
I don't often repeat projects but this one was a winner with the kids and parents last year.
Last year, I had the kids paint a black silhouette of the city and add the windows with paper. I didn't love that as much...the paper didn't really stick well to the ink and the kids didn't really rock those windows. You can see it here.
I'm IN LOVE with the designs on her buildings. Second grade, y'all!
Labels: elementary art, vintage clothing
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