Sharon Gale’s Blog

Due to the success of the Art Cabin, it only seems right that it has its own blog, so from now on please log into http://www.artcabin.wordpress.com

All you need are 12 children, 12 palettes with acrylic blobs of colour, some pots of water and a good selection of paintbrushes … But beware, if you put ALL your pots of brushes within grabbing reach, then all your brushes will get used!!

The childrens’ decorations are looking very festive, having thoroughly enjoyed painting their salt dough, the next step will be varnishing and tying ribbon on them.

The messy rating for this activity is 9/10

Allow plenty of time to wash the brushes!

We also started the Christmas school play scenery. This year’s production is ‘Creepy Crawly Christmas’. As you can see from the photo, we were busy painting giant flowers.

I’ve also sneeked in a photo of a costume design by a year 6 for the Macbeth play, which years 5 & 6 have been studying.

The Big Draw competition artworks were dropped off in the very lovely Gentlemans Row, Enfield. Here’s keeping fingers crossed they liked our entry.

Whilst making batches of salt dough on sunday afternoon (in a rush, as I had to go to my niece’s birthday disco), one gets pensive…….. at what point did I think this would be a good idea!

The recipe is as follows:-
2 cups of plain flour
1 cup of table salt
1 cup of water

Mix the flour and salt, add the water gradually, kneed for 10 minutes, put in fridge for 20 minutes, then make up your design…… but beware… keep your dough to less than 1cm thickness and make molds out of card/masking tape for thicker designs and then cover with the dough (get a book from the library for thorough tuition). Then bake on a very low heat until hard ……… this seemed to take hours & hours! Coat your design with watered down PVA glue, leave to dry , then paint using acrylics. Finish off with a coat of varnish.

This week the children began to make xmas decorations. We had plenty of Christmas themed shape cutters, each child had a batch of dough …. and after a frantic hour of business, the children had produced some interesting Christmas shapes!

Lyn and I duly took these home to bake for what seemed like a week.

Monday is probably the worse day of the week to have a birthday. It’s not right to celebrate before the event, and the weekend seems so far away ……  Anyhow, I decided I would take a few fairy cakes to the Art Cabin to share out and Lyn bought some scrummy chocolate for us to nibble while we spent the morning preparing for the art club and collating all the information necessary to enter The Big Draw Competition. The prize money  (if the Art Cabin was selected) would pay for so much equipment which is dearly needed if the proposed projects (printing, paper-making, mosaic, clay work, to name but a few) are to go ahead.

So this week, the Tudor portrait and MacBeth costume collages progressed. There is more ‘BLING’ on those pictures than Liberacé and  Mr T put together. The Tudors would have been proud!

The after school club was very relaxed, quite a few children were absent, so the noise level was considerably reduced. The children learned about shading and midtones and finished their fantasy castle pictures.

The fairy cakes were a hit with the children and I did have a nice birthday!

Monday, ….. my feet didn’t touch the ground!

I (Big Mouth) used the morning to prepare (despite using most of the half term to prepare also) ……  believe me, there is never enough preparation one can do when dealing with 16 children age range between 5-11 years.

My lovely assistant Lyn arrived to help out despite not feeling 100%, that’s dedication for you!

The lunchtime art club was a pretty relaxed affair, years 5 & 6 were on the rosta today. They dabbled with sketching sheep and fox skulls (they were clean and bleached of course), they also began creating fantasy castles (dragging 3 colours of paint North, using different widths of card. When the paint dries, roofs and minute details can be added to give the illusion of huge castles. The messy rating is 8/10.

During the afternoon we spent time with small groups from class 3 & 4 making collage. The themes were Tudor portraits and designing costumes for Macbeth.

The after school club was a great success, the children worked on the same projects as the lunchtime crew,  but in more detail. They all seemed to enjoy it. I had to smile at the end, we had a queue for the loo, a queue to wash paint off hands, little ones too small to reach the taps and mucky fingers every which way you turned.

The lesson I learnt this week ….. be more prepared! …… We shall have bowls of water at the ready to wash hands in next week. Messy rating 10/10

With the arrival of the furniture, the Art Cabin is ready to ‘Rock N Roll’. Big Mouth is amazed at the transformation, and can’t quite believe that back in March, this space was a cold, uninspiring, storage unit .

The art club which begins after half term is full, (and there’s a waiting list).

Big Mouth is busy planning creative workshops, not only for children but for adults too (more on this subject will be posted at a later date).