"The sweetest way to end the sweetest day is with a quick brush of your teeth to keep the cavities away!"
As I sit here and eat ice cream before bed I can't help but recall one of the greatest nights of sweetness in my entire life-my wedding night! I thought I would share our wedding favor that we made- toothbrushes! Since we had a dessert bar for the reception of our wedding we thought it was fitting! The toothbrushes were just one use, pre-pasted brushes that we got from smilemakers.com. We then slide the toothbrushes through slits we made in small paper doilies and added this saying to them, "The sweetest way to end the sweetest day is with a quick brush of your teeth to keep the cavities away!" Here are some of the sweet treats we had at the reception! Yum!
1 Comment
I thought I would give one more painting lesson idea post for this week. I posted this painting this fall and I had a few people ask me to paint one for them. Honestly, this is probably the least amount of time I have spent on any of my art projects during my time in college! This still life was completed in one long setting, with a short second setting that was for finishing touches. It probably took a total of 3 hours, if that. This is actually one of the first still life's I have set up on my own, I do not do much art from life, and I really need to have more practice with that! This turned out to be a good exercise for me. I was inspired by van Gogh's "Still Life with Pears". For the lesson I would talk about Van Gogh and his impressionistic style, and stress the importance of doing this quickly, and not worrying about it being perfect. All I did was set up my still life, quickly draw the basic shapes that I saw on a small canvas, and then began painting with oils! I blocked in basic shapes with broken color- meaning I didn't just use paint on one flat color, I mixed my colors on the canvas. The key to creating shadows is adding hints of the complimentary color to the main color (orange's compliment is blue). I layered on a lot of paint and this created actual texture on the canvas. These images show the process from the drawing, blocking in the background, then each shape of pumpkin. I definitely recommend doing a still-life with pumpkins! They are so interesting and can vary in color so much! There are also close ups of the texture and the changes in value of the paint because of the way I mixed it on the canvas. I really like how it turned out! Below is the lesson plan I developed with this painting. Other resources and videos I used are included at the bottom of the lesson plan. Good luck with your own still life adventures! -J After a Spring Break spent Pre-Student Teaching, I got right back into the swing of things at school and had my Junior Art Review. For this I had to display my artwork for my professors and talk about it, and they give me feedback and let me know if I'm ready for my Senior Show. It went well, but I am glad to have it over with! One of the things I like to do as I create artwork is to make lesson plans to go with them that I could later use for my students when I am teaching art. For this painting, I created a lesson that I would call, "Paint like ______". This is the process I would have students follow: -Research an Artist, their style, medium, and famous art works -Choose one of the artworks, print it in color, and cut a piece out -Glue that piece on to a canvas -Paint around the piece in the style of the artist -Use the same medium and techniques they used -Color match with paint, blend in cut out image For my painting, I looked at Monet and used his "Haystacks" painting. I painted impressionistically around it with broken color and visible brush strokes to simulate his style. I also referenced Monets "Waterlillies" paintings in my composition. Here is the lesson plan I created for this. There are various resources at the bottom that I used. This could be used for middle school or high school and there are endless possibilities for what you could do with it. Incorporating art history is always a great thing!!
Happy Spring! -J I took some extra time this year to make Valentine's for Grandparents and other family members this year and I'm so glad I did! They turned out SO cute! My inspiration came from this pin that you can find on my Valentine's Pinterest board. We started the process by making prints of Rory's hands. I just chose an afternoon where Rory was in a good mood and cooperating, and we just painted his hands over and over until I had the amount that I wanted. I then cut out loosely around the shapes of the hands. I wrote the text on all of the hands from the palm down, since the hand flips down.--"Blowing Lots of Kisses Your Way!" Rory also decided to paint a little extra on his own :) Next I had to figure out what I was going to put the hands on. I found some square envelopes that we had leftover from the wedding and decided to cut my red and pink 18x24 paper to that size. I think it was 4x4 inches. Next I chose an image of Rory to put behind the hand, to show him "blowing kisses". I then put the image inside a heart shape just to make it more festive! I cut around the hearts and then figured out where they should go on the paper, making sure that the hand covered the picture, and didn't go off the side of the paper. I then created the template that says "Happy Valentine's Day" in a speech bubble, and has a little kiss and "xoxo, RORY." First, I had to change my paper size to print on the 4x4 paper. This is something I learned from Pinterest when i wanted to print on paint chips. You just go to Page Set Up, Paper Size, Customize---then you type in your size! It's awesome for printing on different sizes of card stock to make cards and things like that. Next, I had measure how much room I had left after the hand was placed on, and it was only about 2 inches. I changed my margins so I had plenty of space to have decent sized, readable text. I inserted the kiss clip art and added cute fonts that you can also download from Pinterest. ( This really does work too!) Once these were all printed, I glued the heart pictures of Rory on, and used red washi tape to attached the hand print, so it was like a hinge and the hand could turn down. Good luck with your Valentine's and make sure you get some of your kids' good candy- you deserve it :)
-J I have been married to my high school sweetheart, Karic, for over a year now. I used Pinterest to make my wedding as unique and original as possible! We had an evening wedding, and went with a classic, vintage style in navy blue and silver/gray. I'm going to try to post as many DIY things I did for my wedding, both to document it for my own sake, and so that others can see how fun it is to do things differently to make your wedding extra-special! I really got into all of the decorations that I made, and it was easy to think of original ideas for that, but the one thing that I really struggled in making my own was the ceremony. Don't get me wrong, a traditional wedding ceremony is beautiful, but I wanted to make it memorable as well. Some things we did to make our wedding "ours": -We decided to go with an evening ceremony, for a more formal feel -We had all desserts at the reception...yum:) -Our son, Rory, was the Honorary Best Man -Our high school teacher, track coach, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader officiated our ceremony -We asked all of our guests to wear the "something blue" -My cousin Nick, sang "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz as we walked down the aisle, we had all recorded music for everything, and no piano or organ. He also sang the Lord's Prayer during our Unity Ceremony...And that's what this post is about, the Unity Ceremony. The Unity Candle is the most basic of Unity Ceremonies, I have seen the sand, and even a Unity Cross, but I wasn't feeling any of those. It just wasn't me. Then I came across this "Off the Beaten Path Unity Ceremony" Pin on Pinterest from It's a Brides Life Blog. A UNITY PAINTING!!! This sounded so great with me being an Art Education major, and loving painting, and I had only seen it in this one place! The one problem with this was because this is such an original idea, it was hard to find much input from anyone on how to do it! So I did some research, asked around, and finally decided just to test it out before the wedding! 1. Test run is a mustFirst we did a test run. That is what the canvas is above. We made the image of the heart about 2 weeks before the wedding to test out how we had to mix the paint and how it would flow onto the canvas from the type of container we were using to pour it. (This was a really good idea, because then we used the image that we tried it out on as a decoration at the wedding, and so that guests had an idea of what we were doing while we were actually making our Unity Painting during the ceremony.) To test it out the most important thing was figuring out how to mix the paints. We used Acrylic Paints from Michaels. Because our colors were navy and gray/silver, we had to mix both of them to get the correct shades to match everything else. My formula was not scientific by any means, but I kept track of about how much of each color paint I mixed, as well as how much water. It ended up being about 1/3 water, and 2/3 paint, but it is important that you test out the brand of paint that you buy, as well as the type of container that you put it in! Our bottles were tall and skinny, and did not have large openings, so that paint had to be more watered down than a cup would have to be. Again-TEST IT OUT- get a feel for how the paint pours and what you have to do to make it go where you want it to go. It will also help with nerves on the day of, and you can talk to your partner about it as you go! 2. Punch pourer? no. Paint mixer? Yes!We did not ask anyone to pour our punch, or carry our gifts or cut our cake for our wedding day....We didn't want to trouble people with the little things like that, BUT we DID have to ask someone to be our official PAINT MIXER. This is important because you do not want to be mixing paint in your wedding dress. NO WAY. Plus, do you really think you have time for that! NO! Our wedding didn't start until 5:30 PM and we started getting ready at 10AM- the day flew by! Anyway, find someone who has experience with paints to mix your paint. Write down your scientific (not :) ) formula for them and discuss how the paint should look, show them your practice run, that kind of thing. Set up a time for when they can mix it and tell them where to put it! This is a time and stress saver for you, I promise! Also- don't forget to ask the church if it's okay to do this. We laid down a protective clear covering that stuck to the floor that you can find in a roll at a hardware store, (Menards). 3. The real deal : Unity CeremonyDuring the ceremony, you may be nervous being in front of people, and you might be worried about how this new "Unity Painting Ceremony" will go--don't be! This is the time for you and your husband to share and enjoy. You are being unified in marriage! Don't be worried about how it looks, just go with the flow, take your time, and don't sweat it if you get a little paint on your fingers :) (I did, and our officiant graciously gave me his handkerchief to wipe it off!) Karic's paint didn't come out as smoothly as possible, and he had to give the bottle a couple smacks to get it started. We had a little laugh, didn't panic, and kept going! We decided for our Unity Ceremony not to have a plan of a certain image we would make, but just to have it be abstract. But I'm sure you all could come up with something if you wanted to! Initials, heart, cross-- depending on your colors you might come up with something else! 4. Hang your paintingsFinally, let your paintings dry, and get them hung up! Enjoy them! I keep a photo from during the ceremony near by so we can remember making them! Here is a list of things you may need for your Unity Painting: Canvas (any size you would like, ours were 18x24) Acrylic paints Water Containers to pour from Funnels (to pour paint from bottle to bottle) Protective clear plastic Easel or prop for canvas Rags Have fun with this, make it your own. And share your own original Unity Ceremony ideas here!
Happy Wedding Planning! -J Valentine's Chalk ArtWell, today we took down all of our Christmas decorations. I know, I'm a little late, but I really do love Christmas, and decorating for different seasons! Christmases continue to get better and better with a small child. Rory continues to understand more about Christmas- the fact that he gets spoiled with gifts also makes it a pretty exciting time for him! He LOVED our tree this year and made sure the lights were always on. Here's a picture of my guys in front of our tree (passed down from my parents). This is the night of Rory's first Christmas Concert for daycare. He's growing up so fast! Anyway, enough about Christmas, now it's time to decorate for Valentine's Day! I LOVE chalk art. I love chalkboards, chalk, chalkboard paint, chalkboard anything and I'm all about it! It's so fun and authentic. It looks awesome anywhere, and you can change the look of it whenever you want! I have quite a few chalkboards and I try to change the art on them for holidays, birthdays and I also keep some as functional (but cute), "TO DO" lists. Here are some previous chalk board art works that I have made: They are so fun! You can spend as little or as much time on them as you want to. Most of them are inspired by things that I find on Pinterest, but I usually change it up to make it my own :) If you are wondering, the two boards with the red frames were something that I found at a rummage sale, and I repainted the frame to match my home. Then the wooden trimmed one is a cabinet door that I found at my local Habitat for Humanity ReStore store in Marshall. You can check them out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/HabitatForHumanityReStoreMarshallMn . I bought the cabinet and used chalkboard paint to make my own chalk board on the flat part of the cabinet door. I chose not to paint the trim on this one. I bought about 5 doors with various sizes and trims there and plan to do quite a few things with them! Now here is my Valentine's Chalk Art! These were inspired by various Etsy printables that I found on Pinterest. Here is one of the sites that I was inspired by when I made these, the others are on my Pinterest page, but the Etsy page they are linked to no longer have the printable on them! http://artbyerinleigh.blogspot.com/2013/02/diy-mixed-media-valentines-day-banner.html
Here is my Valentine's Pinterest page that shows all of my ideas for Valentine's decor and DIY. http://www.pinterest.com/jaymeplimpton/valentine-s/ I will be deciding on what Valentine's to make for my son's toddler friends and daycare teachers soon, so stay tuned to find out what I come up with! Now go make your own chalk art! It's easy! -J |