Jewelry Camp, and That's a Wrap!

Just finished week 2 of camp and I am officially now cleaning up my room to leave for SUMMER! Jewelry Camp flew by this week... I had 14 enthusiastic ladies age 9-14 and we made tons of different handmade beads and other projects. Here are some highlights:

On Monday, I showed the girls several techniques for making beads with polymer clay. The possibilities are endless with this stuff, in fact I spend a LARGE portion of my summers as a Middle Schooler making jewelry and small sculptures from it. The girls rolled and stacked the clay and used a pasta machine to help roll thin sheets to create "canes"- thin logs of clay with patterns inside...

 Once the cane is designed and rolled, it can be sliced very thin and the slices can be placed on a round clay base, then rolled again to smoosh them on:

You can also slice your canes much fatter to create beads like this in which the holes are poked through the sides. I asked each girl to make a set of this kind of bead to weave into a bracelet on Tuesday (pics further down):

On Tuesday, we created some ceramic pendants by pressing leaves into the rolled clay. This was a quick and simple project and because they were so thin and it was 102 degree outside on Wednesday, I was able to get them dry in the sun and fired in time to glaze on Thurs:

Here are some campers using the polymer clay beads to make a woven bracelet like I was talking about. We used natural colored and black hemp cord to make them:

I was pretty pumped about the shirts I designed for the camp- isn't the big necklace design printed on the front so cute?!

I didn't get any pictures of the process, but to make these pendants we used black "Cloud Clay" to shape the base and then 36 gauge aluminum to create metal embossed accents and the bales (the hanger). We used silver paint, black India ink, rhinestones, beads and wire to accent them further:

Using toothpicks, white glue and magazines we created these super easy but very impressive looking beads that the girls used to create various bracelets, necklaces and earrings with. I LOVE how these turned out:

Thursday and into Friday we decorated jewelry boxes to keep all of the bling-bling in. Some ladies painted theirs while other decoupaged with magazine clippings and fun papers: 

After finishing the boxes, campers worked on finishing up their pieces and "tying up loose ends" (haha) while working on some traditional friendship bracelets with embroidery floss. 

 Choosing beads and findings to create last minute pieces: 

I am about to embark on my Garrett Grant trip to Rome, Florence and Venice, Italy, which I will be blogging about sometime this summer, but other than that, I WILL SEE YOU IN THE FALL!!!!!!!!!

LS Art Camp 2012!!!

Whew! It's been a crazy last few weeks! Exam week, a few half days, graduation, a professional development day last Friday for faculty and staff, and straight into my first week of camp this week... And what a great week of camp it was! I had 21 Lower School kids age 8-10 who worked hard on a bunch of fun projects and made a mess too (you can't have it any other way in the summertime, right?!) Here is a recap...

On Monday campers did mosaic on small terra cotta flower pots- can you see the concentration?

We also created the base of what became a paper mache fish, using a balloon as the form but I didn't get photos of that messy process! You can see them drying on the line behind the kids in this pic:

On Tuesday, tie-dyed our camp t-shirts. I always order white shirts for camp so we can do this, and they kids always have so much fun! Tying the shirts with rubber bands:

Dying (it rained on Tues so we had to do it indoors):

We also made seed paper by mixing paper pulp, water and seeds in a water bottle, then straining the pulp onto a screen. Next step was to squeeze as much water out as possible to create the flat paper.

Day 2 of paper mache fish- we added the details (eyes, tails, fins, mouths) and did another layer of mache to get the pieces to stick:

My High School helpers grouted the flower pots from Monday and assembled the seed paper flowers (the seed paper can be planted in the ground to sprout wild flowers!)

Wednesday we also glazed bisque mugs, many of the kids doing designs for Father's Day:

Here are some pics of the campers on Thurs and Friday wearing their tie-dyed shirts:

Painting the base color of the fish on Thursday morning:

Painting cupcakes on canvas!:

Some of the cupcake masterpieces:

Friday Morning- Using shaving cream and watercolor to make marbled paper:

We glued the marbled papers onto notecards to make these sets of three:

Friday we painted the fun details on the fish- gills, scales, patterns, eyelashes and even some mustaches! We also added embellishments like sequins, metallic paper, tissue paper streamers and more:

Showing off the colorful little guys:

Glazed mugs out of the kiln:

We created these clay bowls on Monday as well, but I didn't take photos. We underglazed them at the same time as the mugs and they came out of the kiln on Friday too:

Every day after lunch we had a 30 minute sprinkler recess- SO FUN!

Friday afternoon, we cleaned up and celebrated a very fun week with an ice cream sundae party!