sharpie tie dye

i mentioned this a while back, i think, but haven't had a chance to try it until now (gotta love summer vacation!)

Thanks to Heather for introducing it to me...8th grade physical science...gotta love it!

materials needed:

something white (I used a towel i had on hand)

and...


Directions:

1. Lay out dixie cups across the counter and place towel or shirt over the dixie cups wherever you want the "tie dye" parts to be.


2. Use Sharpies to draw dots (or whatever design you desire) on the material on the openings of the cups.

3. Drop rubbing alcohol in the center of the image. The alcohol will draw out taking the color with it! Add as much alcohol as desired. The more you add, the more the image will spread out.

4. Allow to dry completely (do not remove the cups until the alcohol has dried).

5. Place item in the dryer for 20 min to let the colors set in. Then wash and dry as normal.

trash to treasure

we finally had an activity period. poor kids...they have been postponed for about a month now i think...maybe even longer.

today was my first go at "trash to treasure." i gave the kids an idea of what i was thinking (i made a smartboard with pictures and everything).

i have a lovely group of kids who seemed up for anything. i even have 3 boys who tolerated all of my girlie ideas and altered them to fit their own liking!

We plan to tie dye the next time, but today we made tote bags out of old t-shirts. while cutting the arms off of the shirts, the girls asked, "what should we do with these?" HEADBANDS! they went to work and i think got more excited about the headbands than the tote bags!

i have plenty of other ideas in mind...even if we don't get to them during activity period, i hope to do some hear when there is time.

(tote bag made from old tshirt)

(one of the girls decorated her headband with puffy paint...looks great)

(looking good!)

bisquick box gets a facelift

from

to this

with just some mod podge and scraps of paper :-)

now, what i'll use this for, i have no idea! maybe a snack bag for school or something.

activity period has been cancelled 3 times since this rotation, but my hope is that i will have my first 'trash to treasure' activity period with my kids. i'm planning tie dying and will have supplies for the bags above for when we're done tie dying!

trash to treasure

Every month at school we have "activity period." when we were in school it was called "club day." students sign up for the activity they want to participate in and then we meet 1-2 times per month.

For years, i did arts and crafts with janet, which was a blast...probably more for me than her because she seemed to always get stuck with figuring out what we were going to do!

I decided about a month or so ago that i wanted to turn my activity period "green."

our first activity period is next week and i'm really looking forward to it. we're going to tie dye and then decide on future projects.

there are some fantastic ideas out there. if you ever wonder what to do with old CD cases or bubble wrap or t-shirts that don't fit, there is a craft for it!

here is a list of some things i'd like to offer as projects:

-pen holder out of CD cases
-shopping bags out of t-shirts
-jewelry out of metal washers
-surreal collage pictures out of magazines and catalogs
-dog toys out of old t-shirts

and on and on.

i can't wait to send you pictures of what we come up with! until then i am going to keep searching for ideas!