Weekend Fun: Potato Print Eggs

Spring is full of flowers, eggs, and new life – and it arrives during Youth Art Month! Celebrate art (and spring) with paper and paint and plenty of good books that feature art and artists.

There are lots of interesting projects to try in Art Lab for Kids by Susan Schwake. To develop an appreciation for different styles of art, try the picture book Seen Art? by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, which brings you through the Museum of Modern Art at breakneck speed (but you can turn the pages more slowly if you want to explore). The Katie series by James Mayhew features a girl who goes in and out of the framed paintings hanging in a museum: Katie Meets the Impressionists, Katie’s Sunday Afternoon, and Katie and the Mona Lisa.

Make your own art by carving and printing with a potato! This works well with potatoes that are getting too wrinkly to eat, or you may use new potatoes (but you won’t be able to cook and eat them after they are used for painting).

What you need:

• One or more potatoes
• Plastic knife
• Pencil
• Take-out container lid
• Paper towels
• Acrylic paint
• Paper
• Scissors

What you do:

1. Cut a potato in half with the plastic knife.
2. Draw a design on it with the pencil, letting the pencil actually cut into the potato. TIP: You can draw the design on paper first and cut it out, then use it to trace on the potato.
3. Push away the parts of the potato that are outside the design. TIP: The pencil can do most of this, but the plastic knife can help with any harder chunks of potato.
4. Repeat with a different design on the other half of the potato.
5. Draw an egg shape (or any other shape) on a piece of paper and cut it out.
6. Put the paper towel in the take-out container top and put a dab of acrylic paint on it.
7. Dip the potato design in the paint and then stamp or spread it over the paper towel to remove some of the paint.
8. Stamp the design onto the egg shape.
9. Repeat steps 6 – 8 as often as you wish, using and mixing different colors to make new ones.

Weekend Fun: Mixed Media Sunflower
March is Youth Art Month as well as Women’s History Month, so let’s have some fun with art history! One well-known woman artist is known for her large, close-up paintings of flowers – Georgia O’Keeffe. Here is one of her paintings, Oriental Poppies, painted in 1927 on a large canvas (40 inches by 30 inches).

To get an idea of how a flower looks close up, try zooming in with a camera. Many spring flowers, like crocuses and daffodils, are about to bloom – or do a search on the internet for close-up flower views. Then picture Georgia O’Keefe painting that close-up on a huge canvas!

The project for this weekend takes a closer look at flowers but, just the opposite of Georgia O’Keeffe’s large paintings, we will use a small canvas – a four-inch square – and use all kinds of art supplies, not just paint.

Using more than one type of art supply to create a work of art is called “mixed media.” There is a list of supplies for this project, but you can really use anything you have on hand. This mixed media project is a sunflower, but you can do a different flower if you wish. We’ve seen lots of sunflowers recently because it is the national flower of Ukraine.

Make a Mixed Media Sunflower

What you need:

• Sturdy paper, like watercolor paper
• Acrylic paint, watercolor paint, gel crayons, colored pencils, crayons, markers
• Paint brush
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Scissors

What you do:

1. Use the ruler to measure a 4-inch square on the watercolor paper and cut it out.
2. Paint the background yellow with acrylic paint or watercolor paint or a gel crayon. TIP: When you color with a gel crayon, use a damp paper towel or a baby wipe to spread the color over the entire surface. See the examples below for how each type of color looks on the watercolor square.
3. When the paint is completely dry, draw a large circle in pencil at the center.
4. Use markers, crayons, and/or colored pencils to make lots and lots of dots in the circle. Use any combination of dark greens, different shades of brown, black, and gray (see photo below).
5. Repeat step 4 with acrylic paint and a stiff paintbrush (the best kind is one that you forgot to clean after using it) until the circle is filled in and thick with texture.
6. When the circle is dry, use lighter brown and reddish colors to shade around the circle, forming the petals of the sunflower. Keep some color close to the circle, but draw it out to the end to help shape the petals (see sunflower photo below for an example).
7. When the sunflower is completely dry, use blue (crayon, paint, marker, or gel crayon) to frame the edges by making small marks – think of seeing the sky behind the sunflower.

Weekend Fun: Llama Drama!

Llamas are similar to the camel, but They live an ocean (and a continent) away in the Andes mountains of South America. They also feature prominently in literature: Ariadna Dewdney’s Llama Llama series is popular with preschoolers. A storytime favorite of ours is Llama Destroys the World by Jonathan Stutzman. Adults may have enjoyed the personalities of the llamas in Donna Fisher’s Meg Langslow mystery series! Llamas are social animals who like to live in herds and are very interested in people.

You can watch a live llama cam from Spruce Lane Llamas in Stockton, NJ (Hunterdon County) here:
http://sprucelane.com/llamacam9.htm

Make Paper Llamas for a Llama Drama!

What you need:

• 2 white paper plates per llama
• Scissors
• Colored pencils
• Ruler

What you do:

1. Draw ears for the llama at the top rim on the first paper plate, and follow the photos above and below to draw the head and a neck that is approx. 1 inch wide, ending at the bottom rim.
2. Cut out the head and neck.
3. Cut the inside circle from the second paper plate and cut it in half for the llama’s body.
4. Use the remaining paper plate scraps to cut the llama’s legs and tail. If you cut the legs from the rim of the plate, it will look like the llama is running. Llamas love to run!
5. Use the colored pencils to draw the llamas features and a colorful saddle blanket.

Make two llamas for some real llama drama! Start with these jokes and then act out your favorite llama stories:

• What’s a llama’s favorite drink? Llamanade!
• Which side of a llama has the most fleece? The outside!
• Why do llamas have such long necks? To make sure their heads stay on!
• What happens when you get stuck between two llamas? You get llama-nated!

Weekend Fun: Peek-a-boo Flower!

Spring is just over two weeks away – so get in the mood with some books about flowers, plants, and growing things. There are many at the library in both fiction and nonfiction. Learn about how a flower grows and get ready to plant some seeds that will give summer flowers! Zinnia seeds grow well and bloom all summer long.

While you’re waiting, make a peek-a-boo pop-up flower in a box!

What you need:

• 1 piece sturdy cardstock, any size
• ruler
• pencil
• scissors
• 1 piece of cardstock for the flower stem, green or any color
• assorted cardstock scraps
• marker
• tape

What you do:

1. With the short edges at your left and right, fold approximately 1/2 inch on one side and then fold the entire paper in half and in half again.
2. Unfold and fold the other way and rub along the folds to make good creases.
3. Decide which side of the paper will be the front, and fold so that side is on the outside of the box.
4. Make a 1-inch slit along each fold and fold the resulting flaps up.
5. Snip off the flap on the 1/2-inch fold.
6. Follow the folds to form the box. The four flaps form the bottom.
7. Check to see if there is an opening in the bottom. If not (or if it’s too small), snip a tiny square in the center of each flap (see photo).
8. Apply glue to the short side flap and form the box once again. Press and rub to help the glue stick.
9. With the box on its side, open the bottom two flaps and apply glue to the inside of each.
10. Fold up and press to help it stick.
11. Cut two thin strips of green or any color cardstock to form the stem.
12. Glue the two strips together to reinforce the stem.
13. Use the assorted scraps to cut out a circle for the center of the flower and three small strips for the petals. TIP: The strips should be slightly smaller than the box shape so that the assembled flower will fit inside.
14. Draw a face on the flower center and glue the strips criss-cross on the back of it.
15. Tape the flower stem to the back of the flower and insert it through the hole at the bottom of the box so that the flower is inside.
16. Move the flower up and down through the hole. If the petals bump the sides of the box, trim them a little more with scissors.

Weekend Fun: Numeral Face Off!

There was an unusual day this week: On Tuesday, February 22, the numerals for the date were mostly 2s! It was the 22nd day of the second month in the year 2022 (the 22nd year of this century).
Written in the American style, it was 2/22/2022, but in the European style, which puts the numeral for the day first rather than the month, it looks like this:
22/02/2022
It’s the same backwards and forwards! Try it!
Not only were the numerals unusual, it happened to be a Tuesday – so many people called it “TWOs-day.”

Math is practical yet numbers can be fun, as this unusual date shows us. The library has some unique math books that play with numbers. Find them in the children’s area with the Dewey Decimal numbers 510 through 516, but search for “numbers” in the library catalog to find books about numbers in sports, in nature, in picture books, and more.

Let’s make art with numbers! These faces are made with the numerals that stand for a number of things!

What you need:

• 1 sheet of paper per face, any color
• Assorted scrap papers in a variety of colors
• Pencil, marker, and/or crayons
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Craft stick or straw or cardboard strip (optional)

What you do:

1. Cut a large oval (or zero) shape from the sheet of paper. It can be any size or color.
2. Draw some numerals on the scrap paper. See the photo below for an easy way to draw them.
3. Cut out the numbers.
4. Arrange the cut-out numbers as facial features on the oval. Which ones look best as eyes, as a nose, or as a mouth?
5. Add ears, earrings, hair, and more by gluing the numerals to the appropriate places on the face. Turn them upside down and sideways to see what works best.
6. When you’re ready, glue the numerals in place on the face.
7. Optional: Glue or tape a craft stick or straw or cardboard strip to the back for a handle.
8. Do it again using different numerals for different facial features! Give them names like Nine-a (Nina) and Ten-ly and make up stories about them!