Artsy Fartsy Family

I had to check out RedBubble because when I first heart of it, it was described as “When flickr and etsy have a baby”

The site owners say that  ”over the last 3 years RedBubble has shipped 352,700 items of art! We take care of all the hassle. Give us your digital file and we will turn it into the finished product, deliver it to your customer and take care of any customer service problems. You control the pricing of your work – and decide how much you’d like to be paid (RedBubble doesn’t charge a commission – we charge a simple base price).”

This is a bit different than the Cafe Press Model, which gives creators pre-set price ranges to choose from and Etsy, which doesn’t create a finished product.  When I heard of this project, it was in the context of a photographer and digital artist who was wanting a place where she could sell her photos, as prints. I was surprised to also find poetry on the site. After browsing around a little while, I think Liquid Love might be my favorite

As I investigated further, though, I was impressed with the awards RedBubble has received. The simple, clean layout of their site is powerful.

The round, red bubble favicon looks too much like About.com, though. I don’t see much of a way around that, though.  How can a red bubble not be represented by a round, red circle?

I’ve had this habit, over the years, of collecting curriculum. At a certain point, it was manageable. We’re radical unschoolers, so there’s no way i’d force my kids to use the textbooks, I just felt, for a while, that we “should” have them in the house in case the kids WANTED to use them.

We’re preparing to embark upon a road trip of huge proportions, in fact I’m blogging about it at GypsyMom.com. the short version of the story is that we plan to spend about a year in our RV, powered by veggie oil, visiting family all over the country and checking out some national parks, major cities and historical sites along the way.

Reuse your homeschool math workbooks

Anyway- we can’t take all this STUFF with us, so I’ve been selling a bunch of books on Amazon.com, including homeschooling curricula, children’s readers and other fiction and nonfiction books.

But- I can’t really list the workbooks that are half-worked-in, or the ancient textbooks that are outdated, or things with rips or missing pages, know what I mean?

activities with old textbooks

So of course- we’re cutting them up and using them for art projects. My kids had so much fun gluing the fake money onto their pictures. They’d never seen a 50 cent piece in real life, so that was interesting. Also, my 4 yr old was so annoyed that all of the bills in the kindergarten workbook were ones, there were no fives or tens So we had a big long talk about how silly it is to LEAVE OUT entire denominations like that. We’re radical unschoolers, this is how we learn. By the time we cracked open the 4th grade textbook, the kids were clamoring for 5’s and 10’s and we imagined that if we had a high school book they’d get to have 20’s and 100’s. Imagine their surprise to see that the high school books had no illustrations at all. Graphic design fail?

crafts with old math books

Anyways, I put some of the fake money aside in my folder to use for collages or a vision board. The project in the picture was my 2 yr old’s.  She enjoyed learning the names of each coin and gluing them into place.

This activity was way more fun than poring over boring workbooks, counting fake money. Every time my 2 yr old finds a coin now, she says “I got a nickel” or “I found my penny” and she’s usually right. When she doesn’t know the name, she asks.  I feel sorry for the poor kindergarteners who don’t know beyond the one dollar bill.  I plan to go back through the texts to cut more pictures out, but today they were all about the money.

I always cut out words from magazines, phrases that I like from advertisements and things like that. I use them in mixed media, decoupage, collage, etc.

I used to store them in an envelope but I found myself DREADING the idea of opening it up to find that ONE word I was looking for.

To make matters worse, I even stopped cutting things out because I didn’t want to make the envelope fatter. then I just stopped using words altogether, because the whole thing was just a big headache to deal with. Words inspire me. I keep a personal journal for my own sanity and “the words write themselves” is the best way I can think of to describe how the words just spill out when I’m feeling crazy.

So in a stroke of genius, I grabbed a notebook with a bunch of clear-pocket pages, for collecting baseball cards. I used to use it for storing grocery coupons, but since we stopped eating foods with the Frankenstein Factor, we don’t use coupons anymore.

I was thinking of alphabetizing them or something, but this will work for now. I love that I can SEE them, the colors, the font and the words, easily. If I fill up l the sections, I’ll add a black card into each pocket and use the backsides of each pocket, too.

Ideas for Turkey Decorations and Thanksgiving Craft Resources

Find easy Thanksgiving activities for homemade turkey decorations and turkey arts and crafts projects. Make a turkey template pattern and turkey ideas for gifts and more.

It’s time for Thanksgiving arts and crafts. Turkey projects are fun for kids of all ages. Gone are the days of the construction paper turkey hand. Today’s thanksgiving crafts use a wide variety of materials, including craft-store feathers, recycled containers and many more readily available modern art supplies.

Turkey Projects

Make a turkey pencil holder out of a small paper milk carton. Rinse the carton thoroughly and turn it upside down to dry overnight. Cover the outside of the carton with brown paper, like from a recycled brown paper grocery bag. Tie a small red ribbon around the base of a brown tootsie pop and press the stick into the sealed side of the milk carton’s top. This will be your turkey’s head. Glue craft feathers in fall colors to several pencils or pens and place them inside of the open part of the carton.

Pinecone turkey placeholders make great thanksgiving crafts because they’re cute and functional. Begin by vacuuming each pine cone, to remove any dust or insects. Lay the pine cone on its side and glue colored feathers in between the scaled segments. Cut out a rounded brown triangle to use as a face, or just use wobbly eyes. To add Thanksgiving table name cards, mount them onto the end of a straight pin and press it into the pine cone. If you’re using a larger pine cone, you might need to glue it.

Turkey Decorations

Make a felt tissue box cover. Create a turkey template by tracing the edges of the box on the back side of the felt. Cut the felt ¼ inch past the edges and glue the seams together, inside out. When you’re finished, turn it right side out for a smooth appearance. The tissues become the turkey’s tail, so stock up on orange tissue around Halloween or make a white turkey to compliment the Thanksgiving decorations. For the turkey’s head, stick two googly eyes on a toilet paper roll, and use a pipe cleaner for the chin. Cut the roll of toilet paper in half, so it’s not so tall.

Turkey Arts and Crafts

An easy project for children is the Thanksgiving turkey door wreath. Cut a wreath shape from corrugated cardboard, and also a turkey neck and head. Collect several colors of tissue paper and cut them into 1-2 inch squares. Cover the wreath with glue, in small working sections and have the children wrinkle up the tissue paper and press it into the glue. Older children can use the eraser end of the pencil and younger children can just roll the tissue paper into little balls. Once the wreath is covered in tissue paper, stick the head of the turkey over the front of it and hang on any door.

Thanksgiving activities with turkeys are fun for children, but the tired old turkey hand project is a relic from the past. Other Thanksgiving project ideas revolve around traditional symbols of Thanksgiving, like the cornucopia, Indian Corn and the pilgrims. Revive your Thanksgiving turkey (not literally) with new creative turkey projects.

© Lisa Russell Oct 23, 2008
The copyright of the article Thanksgiving Crafts and Turkey Projects in Homeschooling is owned by Lisa Russell. Permission to republish Thanksgiving Crafts and Turkey Projects in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

I found a wonderful post today from a children’s book illustrator who is selling her artwork online for income. She’s done a pretty thorough job of evaluating different websites that she’s used to sell art and comparing their pros and cons. I hadn’t even heard fo some of these sites, although, admittedly, I haven’t made much of an effort to try and sell my art online either, so perhaps that’s why I found this so interesting. I am happy to let others explore while I learn from their experiences.

I’ve never been a big fan of roses. I do appreciate and find it fascinating that heirloom and antique roses are cloned and that we can take a clipping of a rose anywhere and then grow it ourselves, that’s fascinating. I’m sure I’ll warm up to them as I get older.

That said, every house I’ve ever lived in has rose bushes. I haven’t been lucky enough to get a good climbing rose, but for the past 16 years, we’ve had roses on the table pretty much all summer long.

If I was a rose collector, I’d certainly go back to the house we left last year, to take clippings from the long-stemmed red roses that were growing there.

Either way, some roses don’t do well in a vase and once all the vases have been given away, we usually end up doing rose crafts. Our favorite things to do with roses are making rose and mint tea, rose beads and rosewater perfume.

The images below come from a recipe for rose petal tea, old fashioned rose beads and – that white rise is made from coffee filters, click on each for details. The coffee-filter roses were featured on Martha Stewart, you can watch the video. If you’ve never smelled rose petal beads, you are in for a treat because they smell for a very long time. My Grandmother has an actual handmade rose petal beaded rosary that was given to her by HER grandmother and the smell is just enchanting.

Decorating a pillowcase is a great idea for a birthday party craft or for a girl scout meeting or even just for fun. You can decorate plain white pillowcases that you already have, or purchase a Crayola Create Your Own Pillowcase Kit

I want to point out that the last two are by the amazing Kathy of Crafty Chica, she wrote Crafty Chica’s Art de la Soul: Glittery Ideas to Liven Up Your Life and La Casa Loca: Latino Style Comes Home 45 Funky Craft Projects for Decorating & Entertaining that are both jam-packed with bright colorful pictures and easy to follow instructions, she’s awesome.

Without further ado, here are some inspirational pictures that make me want to decorate pillow cases, for sure. You can even do the edges of the bed sheets to match. As always, click on the picture to find out more from the real artist, or to order the product.