Art From Home returns! Today, our facility coordinator, Heather Lea Reid, has a fun pinwheel project that’s perfect for summer. Read through the instructions below, then check out her video tutorial!

Supplies:

• 2 sheets of heavy weight paper – contrasting colors
• Glue stick
• Crayons (optional)
• Scissors
• Pushpin
• Dowel rod or wooden pencil
• Hammer

Step One: Glue together the two pieces of paper. Contrasting colors will create a dramatic effect.

Step Two (optional): color one or both of sides of the paper.

Step Three: Fold the shorter end of the paper to meet the long end. Make a crease.

Step Four: Cut off excess paper to make a square.

Step Five: Make another crease by folding the corner’s together.

Step Six: Cut into each corner approximately four inches, following the crease.

Step Seven: Bring every other corner to the center of the square. Glue the tip down in the center. Press down until for two minutes to give the glue time to dry.

Step Eight: Use the hammer to push the tack into the dowel rod. This is just to start the hole. Pull the tack out.

Step Nine:  Push the tack through the center of the paper. Make sure that it goes through all layers.

Step Ten: Push the tack into the hole in the dowel rod. Make sure you leave enough room for the pinwheel to spin.

Make your own animation come alive by creating a zoetrope!  Zoetrope was one of the first techniques to create a “movie,” and stop motion photographs and illustrations are often used to create a moving image! Our Gallery Coordinator, Paula Wilmot Kraus, put together this tutorial.

Supplies:

• Pencil
• Ruler
• Black heavy weight or painted paper
• White paper
• Bolt with nut or pencil
• Paper plate
• Scotch tape
• Utility knife

Measure and cut a strip of the black paper to 2-1/2 inches tall and 14-¾ inches long; you can tape together two sheets of paper if needed.  Measure along the top of the strip and at every inch, cut out a ¼ inch wide niche that is 1-1/4 inches deep (you can also download and print a template on our website).  Tape the cut black strip into a circle by overlapping each end of the paper; it will resemble a crown. Next, measure and cut a strip of white paper to 1-1/2 inches tall by 13-1/2 inches long.  Make a mark on the strip every 1-1/4 inch.  In each of these eleven boxes, you will draw your animations. Think about creating a consistent object that changes incrementally from one box to the next, like a ball dropping and bouncing back in 11 frames.  Tape the animation strip into a circle with the animations facing inwards, and then insert this onto the bottom of the black circle, with the top of the animations below the niches of the black circle.

Next, find the middle of your paper plate – you can use your crown/animation to help by sitting it on top of the plate and centering it.  Punch a hole at the center, and place the bolt through the hole, securing it with a nut or pencil.  Then position the crown/animations onto the paper plate and tape them as securely as you can. Now use the bolt to spin the zoetrope! Looking through the slits in the black paper, you will see your animation come to life!

Download the zoetrope  template.

Another amazing project from our Gallery Coordinator, Paula Wilmot Kraus!

This is an easy and fun project that creates beautiful amber tones of an abstract nature.  If you are like me, I have lots of old rusty bits I found while on walks – these “road kills” make for some great rust prints. It’s a little unpredictable – embrace the unpredictability!

Supplies:

• Plastic bags
• Paper or cotton fabric
• Spray bottle with ½ vinegar and ½ water (if you don’t have a spray bottle simply brush on)
• Salt
• Gloves or tongs
• Items to rust: old steel and iron items work best for rust prints (steel wool, old washers, staples, etc). Note: Steel and iron rust easily, but newer items are most likely made from alloys that resist rusting.  If that is the case, you can “pre-rust” items by placing them in a disposable plastic container and cover them with the vinegar and water solution.  Let them sit 24 – 48 hours. Dispose of vinegar solution in corner of yard (remnants can stain sinks).

Set up a place to work outside or in the garage on a flat surface. Place a plastic bag flat, then place your paper or fabric flat on top of the bag.  Spritz the paper/fabric with the spray bottle of vinegar and water so that it is wet all over, from edge to edge. Sprinkle salt over the surface and then arrange your rusty bits on top. Spritz a second piece of paper and place the wet side down on top of the first sheet and cover it with a plastic bag. Weigh down the paper/fabric with books or other heavy items to keep them pressed together and let them sit for several hours. Check the paper/fabric occasionally to make sure that it has not dried; re-spritz as needed. When you get the desired effect of a rust print, undo your assembly and let the paper/fabric dry.  Be careful to contain any fluid or rusty bits – they will leave stains.  Once dry, place the paper under a book to flatten it. You now have a unique rust print!

Ceramics Coordinator Brandon Lowery has a fun, easy project to share with everyone! Have food coloring and shaving cream on hand? Be prepared to get a little messy!

Materials

1. Plastic to cover table
2. Shaving Cream
3. Ruler
4. Food coloring
5. Paper
6. Toothpick
7. Towel

To start, cover the table with plastic. Next, make a rectangle out of shaving cream roughly the size of your paper.  Smooth the shaving cream surface with the ruler to get rid of any holes and to make a blank canvas.  Drop food coloring on top of the

shaving cream surface. If using gel food coloring, thin it with water and then apply for a better end result.  After applying the food coloring, take a toothpick and drag it through the food color to create your design.  Once your design is drawn, put a piece of paper on top of it.  Lightly rub on the back of the paper to make sure you have good contact.  Carefully peel the paper off the shaving cream.  There might be some shaving cream on your paper, but you can just scrape that off gently with the ruler. You can keep making prints by following smoothing over the shaving cream again with the ruler (wipe off the ruler with a towel between prints) and laying down paper again.  Each print stands on its own, or makes a background for a drawing.  If you want a new design with the food coloring, just add some more shaving cream to the top and smooth out, repeating the steps above.

Windy spring days are ahead, and Gallery Coordinator Paula Wilmot Kraus has just the thing to make the most of them – homemade kites!

When my brothers and I were young we often just made our own kites.  It’s simple!

Materials:

• Sticks (straight and thin)
• A spool of string
• Scissors
• Adhesive tape
• Paper (newspaper, wrapping paper, or tissue paper)
• Crayons, stickers, or other materials for decoration
• Strips of fabric

Make your kite frame by arranging the sticks into a cross and tie together with string. Stretch the string to the end of one of your sticks to create a diamond shape, each time tying the string around the ends. Tie and cut the string when you are back at the first stick end.

Place your paper under the kite frame and mark the outside of the diamond with an extra inch. Cut the paper and decorate as desired. Fold the paper edges over the string and tape them shut. Poke two holes through the paper near the top and bottom on either side of the vertical stick. Thread the string through the holes and cut and tie them taunt.

Create a kite tail by punching a hole at the bottom of your kite and adding a long piece of string. Decorate the tail by adding strips of fabric. Tape up all holes in the paper.

Tie the end of your string spool to the taunt string running from the kite’s top and bottom.  It will find its “center” when you fly the kite.  Now all you need is an open field, good weather and some wind!

Happy Easter! Andrew Dailey, Cultural Arts Program Supervisor at Rosewood, put together this fun and easy holiday project.

I love to draw and looked around my house for an interesting opportunity for a neat drawing project. I realized that I could draw on eggs and create unique objects. This is such a simple idea that can lead to some very cool results regardless of your skill level.

My materials:

• Hard boiled brown eggs
• Pencil
• White Color Pencil

To start, I hard boiled a few brown eggs. You want to make sure the eggs are hardboiled and firm, and it is best to draw on them when they are cool but close to room temperature. Brown eggs have a medium color surface that is perfect for drawing with both a light and a dark pencil. If you don’t have brown eggs, you can dye an egg a medium color and draw on it, too. I used a basic white colored pencil and a basic number 2 pencil to create the drawings, and I made sure not to press too hard. Using the two pencils, I created contrasts in light and dark to help bring the drawings to life. Simple and fun!

Would you like to make a notebook for a diary or for sketches? Read on to find out how to create a handmade journal!

Once you determine the size of the notebook, you want adjust your cover and pages to match the desired size. I used cover and paper that was 7” x 10 1/4’” so that my closed notebook was 7 inches tall and five and 1/8^th wide.

Supplies
Cover: one sheet of heavy paper or thin cardboard
Pages: ten sheets of either drawing paper or copy paper
Strong thread
Pencil
Bone folder or spoon
Awl or small nail
Scissors
Needle
Paper clips
Ruler
Xacto
Cutting mat or thick surface to cut on

Step 1: Fold each piece of the pages and the cover sheet in half using the bone folder or back of a spoon to crease the fold.

Step 2: Place pages on the inside the cover, tap them on the counter so that they are all flush on the end and snug against the spine. Use paper clips to hold them in place.

Step 3: Mark 3 holes, equal distance apart, along the inside crease of the notebook.

Step 4: Making sure you are on your cutting mat or thick surface – use your awl or small nail to pierce a hole through the pages and cover making three holes along the marks.

Step 5: Cut a length of thread about three times the length of the spine.

Step 6: Thread needle and starting at the outside of the notebook go in the following order.

• Thread center hole from outside to inside leaving a 4” tail.
• Next go to the top hole – inside to outside
• Go all the way to the bottom hole – outside to inside
• Return to the center hole – inside to outside

Step 7: Make sure the two tails of the thread are on either side of the one long thread and make a knot. Trim ends or attach decorative beads, buttons, etc.

Step 8: Fold notebook closed and using a ruler and Xacto trim edges.

Voila! You just made your very own notebook – now write a story or draw a picture!

Need a new way to get moving? Rosewood Arts Centre Facility Coordinator, Claire Dorothy Zook , previously performed professionally as a freelance dancer around the world, and is now a local dance instructor. She put together a fun dance activity to help you get active, and most importantly, have some fun! (Check out Claire’s helpful video below)

Materials:

• Enough space to move
• Your own body!

A wonderful thing happened this past weekend. The sun came out! I felt the need to do a little happy dance! Although, often when I want to get creative getting started can be the hardest part. That’s when I remembered a great tactic my college dance professor used: “Dance by Numbers.” The idea here is that you create a very short movement phrase for each digit 0-9, providing a set of movements to be combined in endless ways. Once you have some starting movement, it’s easy to let the creative wave take over.

Your phrases should be very short and easy to remember. To make this easier, I try to think of something that looks a bit like the number itself, or mimics the way that number makes me feel. For example with the number 1, I always think of a little victory cheer, so I try to put that feeling in the phrase. My 8 phrase looks like an 8, and I make a figure 8 with my body. Then, if I want to dance “18,” I dance my 1 phrase followed by my 8 phrase.

You can use these number dance phrases however you like. Use it to celebrate finishing that math worksheet! You can make it a game, having one person yell out or write numbers up for the rest of the group to dance out.  Have a friend play random music while you dance out your birthday or telephone number. Or just use it as an easy way to get outside in the sun and get moving!

Rosewood Gallery Coordinator, Paula Wilmot Kraus, provided this awesome DIY Camera Obscura project. This fun activity is part-art and part-science, just in time for International Pinhole Day on April 26! Camera obscura, which is Latin for dark chamber, is the basis for all modern cameras.

You will need:

Box: (cereal box works great)

Tape: black electrical tape or masking tape.

Tracing paper or other thin wax or parchment paper

Exacto knife

Scissors

Pushpin or small nail

1:  Empty box. Make a hole using your pushpin in the middle of the unopened end.

2: Cut tracing paper the height of — but wider than — the box.

3: One-third of the way from the pinhole end cut a 3-sided slit in the box to create a little “mouth”.

4: Stretch tracing paper across the “mouth”.  Tape ends, stretching it tight.

5: Tape slit back together so box is light-tight with the exception of the opening.

6: Look into the box and identify light leaks, tape where needed. I had to add some on the window in the box.

Now use your camera obscura!  Put the opening up to your eyes and look toward a bright area of light (it works best on a sunny day).  It will take a minute to get the sense of what you are seeing — this is where the science comes in. The image will be upside down.

If you are having trouble seeing an image, make the hole larger by wiggling the nail in the hole to enlarge it.

Here’s a fun art activity you can do at home, provided by our Cultural Arts Division Manager, Shayna V. McConville!

Needing a break from screens and desiring a hands-on activity, I created a fun and easy artwork using materials found around the house. I picked up one of my favorite books, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and artist Joseph Cornell’s “boxed assemblages” for guidance.

My materials:

• iPhone box
• Scissors
• Glue
• Foam brush
• Markers
• Magazines, postcards, photos
• Small trinkets/toys

I began by cutting out patterns and images from magazines, postcards and photos that loosely related to Frankenstein’s themes of science and nature. I found a photograph of a mad-looking man (my Victor Frankenstein!), 19^th century science illustrations, textile patterns from a fashion advertisement, a Vermeer postcard for its depiction of a room interior, and old photographs. When I had enough material to cover both box interiors, I loaded glue onto a foam brush and coated the reverse side of each image. I then pressed each firmly into place, leaving no empty surface. To complete each interior, I glued old gears, bulbs and artificial flowers to give each box more dimension.  Now these collages are a visual treat that I can admire on my bookshelf, next to the book that inspired them!