glittergoods

doing our part for the kindergarten economy

So, as part of their math unit on money, tomorrow the kindergartners are having a class "store," where they'll be given "money," allowed to spend it on various things (donated by parents), & then track their purchases in a "ledger." 

I decided to make clothespin doll kits, because I think that just about anything is more fun in a kit, also I had a big bag of clothespins sitting around.

I started by using acrylic paint to "stain" some of my clothespins brown.  I like those triangular makeup sponges for this:  wet the sponge, dip it in some brown paint, rub it on the clothespin, & then wipe off the extra.  You can also do this with a pretty wet paintbrush (brush on) & a paper towel (wipe off), but the sponges make it quick & easy.

Next, I drilled a 1/16" hole across the "shoulders" of the pin (perpendicular to the leg opening) for the pipecleaner arms to go through.  In the past, I've just used a regular old drill to do this, but this time I got out the new Dremel drill press that I haven't touched since my parents gave it to me at Christmas, & it worked like an extremely speedy charm.  (Yeah, I asked for it to help with various resin tasks, but instead I'm using it for yet more school projects.  Story of my life right now.)

The kits contain a clothespin, a 3" length of pipecleaner (bent around into a "hand" at one end), two scraps of fabric, a tuft of wool for hair, & a bead bracelet.  All stuff I had around, super easy to put together.  The only really time consuming part of this project came from my decision to make an illustrated set of directions (click here for a pdf version!)*.

These are going to be "big-ticket" items, priced way up at 99¢ (the top of the imaginary price range).  I think they'll sell well.

So then, caught up in the excitement of making tiny craft kits, I put together some bead stringing sets (34¢) & little bundles of wool for felting.  (Felting has now become an activity center during the kids' afternoon free time, but they don't get to take the wool home, so I thought that it would be fun for them to be able to buy their own bags of wool (57¢)).  I did end up picking up supplies from the craft store for the beading sets, but everything else came from stash, which in & of itself was a useful exercise, just looking around at my supplies & re-seeing them from a kid's perspective.  (Can you tell that I have a loooong summer with kids ahead of me?)

It's sort of like getting ready for a craft show.  With fake money, & the easiest-to-please crowd ever.  I can't wait!

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*When you open the pdf file, it looks like a blank page.  Scroll down & you'll see the instructions.  It's two-sided, folded in fourths for packaging, & I designed it so that the fold would be across the top of the cover illustration, so the top part of the first page is blank.

and the winner is! plus kindergarten felting!

My random number generator of an 8 year-old son has spoken, & abcgirl is the winner!  Thanks for all the comments, & thanks for the list of music to check out.  Lots of familiar names, but lots that are new to me, which promises some fun poking around on iTunes.

Around here?  My latest favorite album is Midnight Boom by The Kills, but I am also really liking Hideaway by The Weepies.  With the kids, Beauty & the Beat is in heavy rotation, also various Ramones songs, a B-52s greatest hits compilation, & Elizabeth Mitchell's You Are My Little Bird hasn't really faded away since we saw her last year.

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Today I had the task of mounting the flat felt pieces the kindergarteners made last week in the second of our two felting sessions.

I used the leftover adhesive photo mount squares from the auction project & stuck the felt to pieces of 8x8 cardstock.  Easier & quicker than glue, & the squares will hold the felt nicely behind glass & well enough for a piece that gets tossed in the bottom of someone's kindergarten art 08-09 box.  I used to use those squares quite a bit years ago when I was more into book & paper arts, but am finding them handy in all sorts of ways these days.  An excellent (& cheap!) rediscovery.

Anyway, it was fun to get the felt pieces home & really take a look at them.  This project was a little tricker for the kids than making beads & ropes (our first felting lesson, which I am just now realizing I completely didn't write about), but was perfectly manageable (we had around 25 kids, 4 adults, & 30 minutes to get things done.  This project requires enough dexterity that all 4 adults were kept very busy helping the whole time.).  We did plastic bag felting:  each kid laid out a wool background (two layers of wool strips, strips slightly overlapping on each layer, layers laid perpendicular to each other), added a design on top, then a grownup tucked the whole thing into a quart-sized freezer zipper bag, added some soapy water, & the kid proceeded to smash, squish, & scrunch the whole thing until felt magically appeared.

I essentially used the instructions from Kleas (complete with pictures!), but instead of pouring a bunch of water in & then squeezing it out into a towel, each of the adults had a big narrow-tipped squeeze bottle & we just squirted warm soaped-up water into each kid's ziploc for a count of 10.  We also bypassed the final step of shocking the felt with alternating hot/cold water, but for kindergarten purposes, it was totally fine to skip it.

My demo piece for the kids was a tree, which of course ended up showing up quite a bit in their own work.

 

This kid was very careful in all steps of the project, from wool layout (his pieces were nicely fluffy & loosely laid out, which makes it much easier for the wool to tangle together & felt up) to meticulous & patient smashing of his wool-filled baggie.  I think he probably got the smoothest, feltiest result.

 

However, I think I might love this kid's tree ON FIRE just a little bit more.

ok, then. also, 200th post giveaway!

Dear blog, I didn't think I'd be away for quite so long, but you know how it goes.

Auction:

Birthday:

Pizza night:

Birthday quilt for my mom:

Next design project for school:

...so I've been keeping busy enough.

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To celebrate this, my 200th post on this blog, I'm going to have a little giveaway (because, really, with all of my blog absenteeism, who knew I'd hit 200?  I'm so pleased!).

It's one of my modern patchwork pouches, complete with hand-printed loopy twill tape & a glitter zipper charm.  For a chance to win it, leave me a comment with your favorite current music -- album, artist, or song -- & I'll pick a winner on Monday.

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