Art Club Christmas Project

Check it out, here is one of the ARC clients with a bunch of others in the background. Kind of gives you an idea of how many of these things we cranked out! (13) I gave everyone the choice of sewing buttons to their snowmen, or drawing the eyes, mouth and etc to the snowmen with markers. A distressing amount of people chose to sew! It all worked out and I think they enjoyed themselves. Go to my other blog for more pics.

Tonight I am going to another one of those Department of Developmental Disabilities meetings to find out how difficult my life will be as a result of new proceedures. I guess that's not a very good attitude, is it? I was thinking how it might be nice if Kate's father took on some of this responsibility, but he is such an amazing DICK, he is incapable. He is chronically unemployed and doesn't even have a car. Don't worry, I'll take care of everything!!!!!!!!!

How are you all doing?

No Snakes, Yet

I was all set to make snakes today, then I thought that maybe I should start working out the next project I have planned for Art Club. I decided we could make snowman wallhangings. I am scheduled to do it December 1st, and that is coming up in a hurry. I made a sample today to be sure my ideas were sound. I intend to do most of the work up front. I'll have the background ready, I'll iron fusable onto all the different fabric components. I will draw the shapes and let the artists cut them out and fuse them. I 'll let people decide whether or not they will sew buttons or use fabric markers to put on the details of the snowman. Hopefully we can manage this in the 2 hours we'll have.

I actually did start a snake today. I need to figure out how I want to do the eyes. It's not in the pattern, but I want to make a tongue. I think my snakes will all have rattles. I'll show you tomorrow

Art Club Flies Again

Flying by the seat of my pants, that is. This is a great way to get teaching experience, because everyone is so forgiving.

My plan was to supply everyone with a wine bottle. My husband and I worked really hard all summer, and we managed to drink enough wine to supply most everyone with a clear bottle. (I have no idea how much of the wine we drank this summer came in a green bottle, I didn't save many of those) I had tissue paper in several colors for everyone to tear up and glue to the bottles. Then I had labels for everyone. I put the labels in PowerPoint, and I figured we could go on the computer and type in the potion names they came up with. I brought it in on a disk. I made sure I would have use of a computer and a printer. Unfortunately, I assumed that the computer would have Microsoft Office installed. That is so common, but... NO. They have virtually no softwear on these computers! I have no idea what they do with them! Without that softwear, I figured I needed to go to plan B, which was that we draw our own labels. No one cared except me, so no problem.

Before I investigated the computer situation, I gave a little demonstration about how to glue on the tissue. When I came back, I had some people that were already finished, some that were gluing giant pieces of tissue to the bottles, and some that not really doing it at all. So, I had to get that situation under control. I asked everyone to think up a potion for the project before coming in, thinking that would save some time. Only Kate thought of anything ahead of time. So I went around to try to help people think up some kind of interesting potion. This can be like pulling teeth. Most of the time I ended up making different suggestions until I said something they liked. It's times like those that I think that maybe my expectations are too high for this group. But that is part of the learning process for me, I suppose. Kate came up with a couple of good ideas, for example, a potion called "Creep-Away," for certain situations on public transportation, but in the end she came up with a "Teleportation" potion.

When  Everyone had a decent label, I handed out stickers and jewels to decorate the bottles. Everyone got pretty involved with that, with a minmum of arguing who was hogging up all of the sparkly spiders.

Pretty much all of the participants have signed photo releases, but just the same, I will only post this picture of Kate. See the
Art Club Blog for other pictures and the potion ideas.

I'm thinking of fabric wall hangings for a Christmas/Winter project. My day to do that is December 1st. The only way to do this is with iron on fabric pieces, which I will have to plan out ahead of time. More on this as I figure it out.

More Art Club

Yesterday was the second meeting of Art Club. This was the day that everyone assembled their collages from the images they had collected previously. I didn't really know what to expect, although I did know what I was hoping for. I guess I was hoping for undiscovered genius! What I ended up with was a lot of cool collages and a group of people that really seem to be having fun.

I learned that I should not let people take their projects home, because they may not come back again! A couple of people had to start from scratch, but no big deal.

I set apart a special table as the glitter station. I love glitter, and so does everyone else, but Jeez, what a mess. I have 4 ARC employees helping helping me when I do this, and I am so grateful. Two of the helpers made collages themselves, and I loved that they did that. (I will save those images for another day.) One of them says she paints, but I think the other guy does not normally make art. Once you get out of school, I don't think there are many opportunities for the average person to make art unless they are really driven to do it. I want to make art club for the whole world!

Now that we have assembled collages, next week we will adhere them to black presentation board and have a mini show. I'm hoping to get everyone to be able to talk about their collage and tell why they picked certain images. I expect this to be a challenge, as it was in class critiques in college! I think it is hard to put into words some of the things that go on in our brains.

I have been saving large pieces of paper from work, I mean the ends of paper rolls, so that if we are done early, we can have a group draw, like we had at Kate's Valentines day party. That seems to go over well.

I decided to make a separate blog for Art Club. Have a look if you get a chance.

You Could Make This

And so can I.

http://thefarmchicks.typepad.com/farmchicks/2009/04/quilted-babydoll-smock.html

I was directed to this from the PamKittyMorning Blog.

I just had to get this out there.

In other news, I am getting positive feedback from my class, and today I was making arrangements for our visit to the museum. I am also going to speak with the recreation director of the Hunterdon ARC and make plans for the future of ART CLUB. I'm pretty excited about al this. If this really takes off I might need to make a separate ART CLUB blog. Then I won't have to worry about scaring care takers of ARC members with any weirdness that might end up on this blog.

In other, and again, unrelated news, I have finished the housewife-needs-a-cocktail-tea-towel quilt. We'll see if I can get it together to take a decent photograph soon. The weather is OH-MY-GOD-SRING-LIKE today, too bad I am stuck in an office. Tonight Kate goes to bowling. While she bowles I'm heading to Target to get the makings for that babydoll smock. See ya!