Fabric Weave

I use a fabric glue, that you can get at any store that sells fabric, to put this piece together.  There is no sewing involved with this piece.

1. You want to cut up a minimum of two styles of fabric; one in 4 inch x 12 inch strips and the other in 4 inch x 9 inch.  You can go 4 inch x ___ inch depending on how big you want your art piece.

2. Once you have your strips, you are going to take one strip at a time and glue each edge down to hide the frayed edges.  Then you will fold the strip in half to make the strip thicker and so both sides look the same.  They should look like this.  At this point don't worry about the fray that is at the very end of the strip, the border that we put on later will hide it.

3. You should have one set of long strips and another set that are slightly shorter.

4. Now you can begin to weave your colors together.  When you weave your first strip make sure you glue all the little squares, do this for this one only and for the very last strip you put in.

5. When you weave your second strip only glue down the very top square that you started and the very bottom square.  Do not glue all the squares in the middle because it won't end up soft at the end.

6. Continue step 5 until you have weaved all the way to the end.  When you get to the last strip make sure you glue down all the squares on the last strip.  So now all the 4 edges around your weave pattern should all be glued and there should be NO glued strips in the middle.  The middle should be glue free.

7. Now take a third color and create a boarder for your weave piece.  Make sure you glue this boarder down.  The boarder is the finishing piece and the piece to hide the rest of the frayed ends.

Identity Hands

This is a great "Get to Know You" project.
1) On a sheet of paper place your hand down and out line it with any art medium.
2) Design the inside of the drawn hand with something that describes who you are.
3) Share what you have created.
* If this is a group project:
4) Have everyone cut the hand shape out.
5) Paste everyones' hand shape on one giant board so all the hands are together in one place.
6) Name each hand and then share what you have created.

Create to the Music

This exercise is very freeing.
1) Have a mix of music ready.
2) Have a variety of art materials such as water colors, chalk, oil pastels, etc.
3) Place in front of you a large sheet of paper.
4) Turn on the music, grab a drawing utensil, close your eyes, and begin to create on the paper how you feel the music would look like in colors.
5) When the song changes, grab a different drawing material and start again on the same piece of paper or a different one.

Water Color Sun Catchers

These are coffee filters!
1. Water colors
2. Unused coffee filters
3. Paint your coffee filters with the water colors.
4. Let the filters dry.
5. Clothes pin
6. Take the dried painted coffee filter and start pulling it into the clothes pin until you get a shape that looks like butterfly wings.
7. Take a string and tie it around the body of the clothes pin so you can hang your sun catcher in the window.
8. Hang in a sunny window.