Students first drew whimsical owls with sharpie on the sticky side of a sheet of contact paper, and then colored them in with oil pastel.  We instructed them to start with a “ghost” shape for the owl’s body and they took it from there!  We cut a frame out of a piece of cardboard and, after attaching a 2nd sheet of contact paper on top, we mounted them in the frame and then they made a hanger using a wooden dowel, colored wire and beads.  Beautiful!

Looking for the perfect accessory for your new fall outfit?  Look no further!  These cute baby barn owl pendants can be worn alone or worn several at a time (fun fact:  a group of owls is called a “parliament.”  Really!  Look it up!).  These pendants are made entirely from recycled materials that are easily found around the house and each one takes approximately four minutes to make!  So if you get started right now, you should be able to make about thirty by dinner time!  Have fun!

You Need:

• Recycled cereal box or similar weight cardboard
• Water bottle lids
• Buttons and beads
• Yarn or twine
• Small hole punch
• White school glue
• Patterned paper or colorful papers from a magazine or catalog
• Optional:  craft circle punch

How to Do It:

• Trace a circle approximately 3 – 5″ on a piece of recycled cardboard and cut it out.  As an option you can use a 3″ craft punch.  In our example we used a 3″ scalloped circle punch.  After you cut the circle, using the small hole puncher, make a hole in the top to string the twine to make a necklace.
• For the wings, cut a small circle out of colored or patterned paper.  Cut the circle in half.  Each half circle will become a wing.
• Cut a small triangle or diamond shape for the owl’s beak.
• For the belly, using the same small circles as you cut for the wings, cut a curved shape out of one edge of the circle.  You may have to experiment to get the right size, compared to the size of the body and wings.
• To make the eyes, start by glueing small white circles that are a little larger than the water bottle lids.  These will form the fluffy feathers around the owl’s eyes.  Then glue on the water bottle lids flat side down, then glue the buttons inside the lids and lastly, glue a small bead for the pupil.  You don’t have to stick to these materials for the eyes – get creative and see what else you have laying around the house that you can use!
• Dab dots of glue on the cardboard body and attach the wings, belly, and beak.
• Tie the two ends of twine together and feed it through the hole in the cardboard, looping the other end through the twine and pulling it tight to form a pendant knot.

Spider webs are sticky and so is this quick and easy Halloween-inspired craft for toddlers!

We use a lot of simple household materials for toddler art projects, much to the fascination & surprise of the parents in class.  Sometimes we hear them whispering to each other, “What is this??” as they feel something, assuming it must be some sort of specially made, hard-to-find art material. They are usually surprised when they learn it is something so simple – the same stuff their grandparents used to line the drawers and shelves of their camper with!

Kids love contact paper for it’s stickiness without the messy fingers!  It’s great for toddler collage projects, coloring with oil pastels (the kids enjoy the creamy, slick feel of the pastels on the sticky side of the contact paper), sun catchers, you name it!   It’s easy to find (in your local hardware or drug store in the kitchenware aisle), but we feel obligated to warn you that mastering the technique of removing the backing paper without the sticky side ending up stuck to your face takes years of practice and the coordination of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat.  We have good days and bad days.

You Need:

• Black contact paper
• Clear contact paper (to cover the top when finished)
• White yarn or string
• Masking tape
• White oil pastel
• Odds & ends to stick in the web so it looks like a real spider web
• Glitter (we use Halloween colors like purple, green & orange)
• Something to make the spider.  You can get creative here – a cotton ball or pom pom… We used a small circle of scrap paper with two buttons for eyes, and little sticky Wikki Stix for the legs.  Wikki Stix are another great material for toddlers since they can stick them by pressing without having to use glue.  Or kids can just draw a spider with oil pastel.

How to Do It:

• Tape a large piece of black contact paper to the table so it is very secure.  You don’t want it to come off the table when the little ones gets their hands stuck to it!
• Start with a white oil pastel to draw lines on the black contact paper.
• The rest is pretty easy!  Start sticking long pieces of string to the contact paper.  For toddlers of course, they likely won’t understand or care that they are making a “spider web” – to them, it is more about exploring the materials and the joy of creating something by themselves!  You can help them expand their vocabulary while they are working by asking how it feels (sticky, etc.), and what colors they see, etc.  For preschoolers, you can look at real spiderwebs in nature or pictures, and they are old enough to try to arrange the string in the shape of a spider web, but again, even for that age, it’s more about the process than the finished product.
• Create the spider by either arranging and sticking materials in the shape of a spider, or drawing the spider with oil pastels on the contact paper.
• Sprinkle a little glitter to resemble the web glistening in the moonlight.
• Cover with a clear piece of contact paper.  Here’s a handy tip to avoid a lot of air bubbles:  remove the paper backing, and drape the contact paper over the bottom piece in a U shape, then gently lower it so the curve of the U sticks to the center of the bottom piece, and slowly lower each side. Then encourage the child to help rub it so it sticks together!

~Early October in Paris, exactly three years ago this week.  Mid-70′s, beautiful fall colors.  Long shadows and filtered sunlight.  Afternoons warm enough for ice cream from the vendors in the Jardin des Tuileries, and evenings cool enough for cozy scarves and boots.   Remnants of summer hanging in the air.   Strolling, basking.  Slow pink sunsets.  Golden leaves from the linden trees along the Seine sparkling like diamonds fluttering in the sunshine, falling and crunching under our feet on the gravel path.  Catching up with a dear old friend.  Sending my niece a tutu and ballet flats from Repetto, to remind her of our trip in the spring a few years earlier.

Paris in March is wet, cold, & windy.  But magical.  Paris in October is nothing short of heaven.

A Room with a View.

My last trip was only a few short weeks after the stock market crash in 2008, right before three-fourths of my 401(k) went missing, never to be seen nor heard from since.  It’s hard to imagine ever being that spontaneous or indulgent again anytime soon, but we can dream, right?  Check out the beautiful images of Paris on one of my favorite blogs, Little Brown Pen.

And I secretly confess to watching this video about four thousand times.