Weaving Paintings

I led drop-in art at the OKCMOA this weekend and we had a great time exploring warm and cool colors with watercolors and weaving.

First I gave each student two pieces of watercolor paper. I explained warm colors and cool colors and we looked at examples on the board. Now we get started painting.

We used our yellow, red and orange watercolors to completely cover our first piece of paper.




Then we filled our second sheet of paper with cool colors. Our paint was blue, purple and green.





We used salt and paper towels to add fun effects to our papers while they were wet.

We used a hairdryer to speed up the drying process and then worked on cutting our papers to prepare them for weaving.

Looking at your paper vertical, or portrait style, bring the bottom of the paper to the top making one fold. We made our cuts from the folded end almost to the top of the paper. You do not want to cut all the way through the paper.



You can make straight cuts, wavy cuts, zig-zag, etc.

Now we cut the second sheet of painted paper into strips. You want the strips to be as long as your loom paper so looking at your paper vertically make horizontal cuts creating strips for weaving.



With our paper vertical we weave our strips of paper going over and under our loom paper. The second strip will go opposite of what you did the first time. If your first strip began on the top, your second will start on bottom. As you move along the paper will take on a checkerboard effect.



To finish we mounted our papers horizontal on construction paper that was a little bit bigger than our weavings creating a mat for our piece. I laid out a lot of colors so the kids could see how putting their piece on different colors could really change the overall look of their piece. This was so much fun, here are some of our finished creations!

You will need:
-Student grade watercolor paper
-Watercolors
-Brushes and washout bowls
-Scissors
-Gluesticks
-Salt and textured paper towels (optional)
-Hairdryer for speed dry (optional)

Charlotte's Web Weavings

I am the July artist for the Museum's Drop in Art program. Come by and see me this month on Saturdays from 1-4! It is FREE with a paid Museum admission. (next week we are making Aztec Suns, 7/25 Van Gogh Sunflowers and 8/1 is Monet Masterpieces) Can't beat that! The Oklahoma City Museum of Art offers this EVERY Saturday! There are different artists year round offering an exciting array of art pieces you can make and take home with you.

Yesterday in honor of E.B. White's Birthday, (author of Charlotte's Web) I thought it would be fun to do spider webs. We made spider web weavings and what fun we had!

I prepped for this by creating the looms ahead of time. You will need.

-paper plates
-yarn
-scissors
-tape
-markers if you want to decorate edges



I precut each plate (I made 17 cuts, about an inch long) around the edges-the important part is that it has to be an ODD number of cuts so your over under pattern will work.

A hole is punched in the center of the plate. (I just stuck a pencil though mine.)

Then to assemble the loom I cut 17 pieces of yarn. Each piece is put down through the center of the plate, though one of the slits and double knotted on the back. Yes, I was a busy girl prepping looms!

To get the kids started we cut a length of yarn color that they wanted to weave with. One end goes through the center hole and is taped to the back to hold it in place. then with the other end you start going over and under each of your "spokes" making a circular pattern. When you want to change colors, cut your yarn and double knot a new color to the end of the old one.

We made little yarn "Charlottes" and double knotted them to our last piece of yarn. To really finish we used markers to cover the white of our plates. Everyone enjoyed making Charlottes!


I think this was a nice project to introduce fiber art to the kids. Although I am a painter myself, I love to use all sorts of things to create!

Green Weaving

"How do you come up with your ideas?"

I get this question from parents, friends and even kids. I think A LOT. I think of ideas in the middle of the night, in the shower, in the car...and constantly re-think them. Sometimes I'll be inspired by something and try to think how I can do it. Sometimes I just get that "a-ha moment." Sometimes not all my ideas are "invented" by me, but I try to make them mine through how they are applied and taught. Like yesterday's project. I am not the first one to use sticks for looms, but I tried to come up with an original idea how to expand the idea.

Green Weaving was brought on by thinking about a class for St. Patrick's Day. Green. I had wanted to do a weaving project for a while and thinking green, I thought..."GREEN" as in RECYCLE! I do a lot of brainstorming in all of my processes.

I began saving cardboard boxes from packaged food items, odd bit of ribbons and bows off valentine chocolates, bubble wrap, plastic from tissue boxes...you get the idea. Then, I cut those items into strips. We used those things to weave through our loom.

I made the looms from branches in our backyard. Our kitchen was full of branches! I broke them into pieces and hot glued them together. Then I wrapped yarn around to use as the weft. They turned out so COOL! I made 40 looms hoping that would be enough and it was-barely!

Had quite a few kids and adults yesterday and they had a great time! A few parents even joined in the fun.

Everything is always set up in advance. I ended up putting our more items, I wish I had taken another pic. Oh well. You get the idea. Students each had a loom, weavable items and scissors. I encouraged them to walk around and get other items if there was something from another pile they wanted to use.



I took a few pictures of work alone with permission. These are from a 4 year old and a 6 year old. So much fun!




I had a few looms leftover and am excited to weave with the boys this week!