Art Room Tour

I'm an art educator.  I teach elementary art.  And while there a days that I feel completely defeated by my job (who doesn't?!), I love it when I think about the fact that I get paid to cultivate a love of art with students and create beautiful things all day long!

I will try to periodically post lesson plans and resources for art education, but since it's summer, I will share some photos from my art room. 

Here's a little information about my school:

• This will be the 6th year that our building is open, and I have taught at this school since then.
• They actually remodeled our school last year, and I got a completely new art room.  We also have 2 art rooms in my school, but we do not yet have enough students to hire a 2nd art teacher (Boo!).
• My principal is awesome, and asked them to paint my room when it was added on last year.  I had to choose between 5 colors that were already in our school.

Decor in my previous room.

Close up of my window coverings. 

 I simply sewed together bandannas and attached them to the blinds with Velcro.

My husband got me all of these purple and orange pieces when he worked at Petsmart.

I created a secondary color scheme desert scene above the cabinets.

Of course, I had the primary colors represented with these crayon "piggy banks".

I used fake flowers and painted terra cotta pots to show complimentary colors.

I made this awesome rug cover with bandannas.  Unfortunately, I did not survive the year so well.

Before photo of my "new" art room from last year.

The back wall of my room.

The door is to my storage closet, plus sinks and cabinets.

The front wall of my room, including projector screen, whiteboard and a bulletin board.

And the after, thanks to a lot of help from my Dad and husband!

I made these tissue paper flowers for our wedding reception party and reused them around the doorway in my classroom.  They've held up really well, and the kid don't really mess with them.

I reused the complimentary flower pots from my previous room.

...And the window coverings!  I found these papel picado banners in San Antonio.

After all of the moving, unpacking and redecorating last summer, I don't plan on making too many changes in my room with year except for the bulletin boards and table arrangement.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my art room(s)!  I will try to post some more close ups and techniques that I use in future posts.

Scrapbooking

I love scrapbooking!  I like preserving my photographs and memories in a beautiful way for myself and others to enjoy.  I think that I started scrapbooking in high school, but I always loved documenting my life even before I began scrapbooking.  I always bought those interactive books that you could fill in with information all about you. 

This is from a high school senior year album.

The Beginning
My first scrapbook was created out of a sketch journal that I had.  It was incredibly primitive form of scrapbooking.  I'd cut around the people in the photograph, attach it to colored cardstock and stick it in the book with a title and some journaling.  While it was not beautiful looking back, it was a start!

I created this layout the summer after my senior year.

I remember when I found a scrapbook store in a nearby town and loved shopping there.  I'd spend most of my high school summer job paychecks there.  I gradually started to use actual scrapbooks, designer papers and eyelets and brads (they were very popular at the time, and a pain to add to your pages!).  I also started collecting enough supplies that I needed organizers for it all.  I pretty much would create 1 new scrapbook, which documented a year's worth of photos.

By college, I got a lot fancier with my scrapbook layouts.

Mini Albums
Then I started creating (and still do!) mini albums of specific trips or themes.  I enjoy picking up lots of coordinating paper and supplies and putting a few photos in whatever beautiful little album that I can find.  I really love mini albums, because as opposed to my yearly scrapbooks - I generally finish these albums.  Sometimes my yearly albums sit around for months - or sadly, years - until they're finished (and my husband loves pointing this fact out!).

A mini album of a trip and December Daily.

The Problem
Then something happened when I got an iPhone... I was taking a lot more pictures of everyday things.  Having a camera at your fingertips is a pretty amazing thing, but it became increasingly more difficult to scrapbook.  I had too many single picture layout, and I was losing interest in scrapbooking these layouts.

Here's a layout that I created which had multiple "everyday" pictures.

The Solution
It's called Project Life.  It is an incredibly new and interesting challenged in scrapbooking that I'm taking on this year.  I really enjoy it, because it's a much easier way of scrapbooking.   For my project life album, I document a week at a time.  It really shows more of my daily life than my previous scrapbooks did; they generally only showed specific events. 

 I'm excited to continue, change and expand upon my Project Life albums.  Please comment with any questions that you may have about this scrapbook style, and I will try to do my best to answer them!