Adopt an artist

Art Camp 'adopt an artist' day. Can you get who they adopted? (BTW I was soooo impressed with their work! We had a fantastic end of day exhibition)

Caricatures x 2

...and some caricatures of my 'adorable' post 16 arts award group, bless em.

Caricatures

We had a lot of fun on the last after school art session before Easter drawing caricatures!

WALL MURAL at Loughborough walk in centre

This is the wall mural we were commissioned to produce in the new reception area of Loughborough's Emergency Care centre which opened this week. Me and several art students from Rawlins College took on the challenge to add colour and excitement to what was a lovely, but very plain and not very child-friendly room. Now, children visiting the hospital will have a little area to play, look at and enjoy. We hid 10 ladybirds in the mural so that there was something to do too. The ladybird theme was a nod to Loughborough's Ladybird Book heritage.

Pop up Easter cards at Art Camp

An old Easter classic- but some of the children hadn't done this before so we had a great time! The method is simply to use two layers of card, one cut and folded into a beak. As you can see, they all had their own personalities.

A medley of mosaics

Ceramics and Mosaics after school art club engaged children from aged 5 to 15 and incorporated loads of different ways with mosaics. Here, paper mosaics on a hexagonal mirror, tile and grout (traditional) mosaics on a tile base, inflatable packaging with glass paints for a fun activity and using shells on a picture frame.

Paper plates make the best masks

Mask making? I'd never buy ready cut masks- these paper plates are from the pound shop and I haven't found an animal or character that can't be made from them yet! Here is a very striking monkey!

Teeny Tiny Mochimochi - a knitting craze

Anna Hrachovec's wonderful book provided the guide for this mini hotdog which was used to raise money for charity at an auction this week. My student Kirsty, who is mid-way through a very exciting GOLD ARTS AWARD taught me how to knit with small bamboo sticks on the round on one of our meetings. Kirsty is using wool and yarn crafts as the basis for a year long project involving teaching, exhibition, event organisation and yarn bombing.

Vintage brooches do the rounds

These vintage brooches are made from the simplest sewing technique and are a great way of recycling small pieces of fabric. I have done this workshop for a children's birthday party, Quorn Brownies and our Stride group at Rawlins. Beginners to sewing can easily cover messy stitches and the resulting flower can be worn as a brooch or hairclip (as seen here). Using a button in the centre gives a lovely old-fashioned look. Email me for full instructions if you wish.