Recycled

Mini Paintings

Do you recognize these materials? I’m big on repurposing found objects into art, so when I found a plastic slide sheet from my pre-digital days I couldn’t bear to throw it out before giving it the ol’ arts and crafts makeover. If you’re not familiar with these, they’re essentially sheet protectors for slides. I showed [...]

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Baby Food Candle Jars

Despite putting my best foot forward toward making my own baby food, I’ve still succumbed to buying jars of smashed peas and pureed peaches for handy food on-the-go. While all of our jars get recycled, it’s hard to ignore the quantity of glass or the art-making potential in these adorable little vessels. I allowed about [...]

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Face Collage for Scribblers

When I was an art teacher, the youngest age group I worked with was Kindergarten so I rarely had the chance to witness a child’s transition from scribbling to representational drawing. My three year old daughter is at the precipice of representational drawing and it’s an exciting place to be, but she can get frustrated [...]

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Mud Pie Kitchen: Beta Version

Thumbnail image for Mud Pie Kitchen: Beta Version

This may not look like much, but we’ve been testing our mud pie kitchen and getting a fresh perspective on what works. It used to reside in another part of our yard, and I thought that moving it might make it more accesible. And it did!! I fashioned the stove/sink from two wooden crates I [...]

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Hanging Fabric Collage

While my daughter could spend all day at the park, she’s not so interested in hanging out in our garden these days. I’m wrapping my head around the dilemma of spending too much time inside, and have a few theories and solutions brewing, one of which is to take our art projects outside! Materials Paper [...]

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Bubble Print Lunch Bag

We made prints from some bubble wrap I rescued from a recent package. It was one of those projects that came together quickly — I can’t remember why exactly, but I didn’t have my camera ready. The good news is that I collected lots of good material on this topic…scroll to the bottom for tutorials [...]

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Creative Challenge #5: Plastic Bottles

Make something with Plastic Bottles In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to raise a little awareness toward the enormous amounts of plastic bottles used around the world, coupled with some thoughts on recycling and upcycling those bottles into creative products. My family is hooked on bubbly water, and while the number of bottles we [...]

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Glittery Collage with Acrylic Gloss Medium

Have you used gloss medium before? It’s a clear acrylic paint that is great for sealing two-dimensional projects. I was cleaning out the laundry room and came across an old bottle of acrylic gloss medium and varnish. Have you ever used this stuff? It’s awesome! It’s essentially glue wrapped up in a paint bottle, and [...]

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Growing Big Ideas

“Ideas aren’t self-contained things; they’re more like ecologies and networks. They travel in clusters.” -Kevin Kelly, Futurist and Author of What Technology Wants We had a big pile of CD cases, just waiting to be repurposed into…something! BioColors paints are known for their plasticity (they don’t crack like tempera), and I thought it we could [...]

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