Christmas Tree Truck Ornament

This is my take on the Christmas Tree Truck design that is still quite popular this year.

I came up with this ornament for Christmas Craft Day so it's a fairly easy one to put together.














MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- pattern template
- corrugated cardboard scrap
- red and grey (black and white) acrylic paint
- red felt
- black felt
- red buttons
- wooden coffee stir stick
- white craft foam
- sticky gem
- grey glitter paper
- garland ties (garland pipe cleaners)
- tacky glue
- fine sharpie pen
- string for hanging

PROCEDURE:

Using the pattern for the truck body cut one out of corrugated cardboard.

Paint both sides of the cardboard with red acrylic paint.


Set aside too dry.

Cut 2 pieces out of your coffee stir stick.

Paint the wood pieces grey.


Let dry.

Cut the wheel well pattern out of the red felt, basically a loonie sized circle, and cut in half.

Cut 2 black circles, about quarter sized, for the tires.

Glue one of the wheel wells on first positioning it just back a bit from front of truck.

The running board is next.  I added a few texture lines on it with a fine sharpie pen.

Glue running board into place.

Glue on the next wheel well.

Glue the tires into place and the truck rear bumper.

Glue 2 red buttons onto the tires for the hubcaps.

I found these great holiday button packs at Dollarama.

For the window I used a grey glitter paper.

I then used that fine Sharpie pen to draw in the lines for the door and the handle.

For the headlight I cut a semi circle out of white craft foam, glued it into place and then added a sticky gem.

The tree is made from these garland ties.

You only need 1/4 of one tie.

Turn truck to back and glue tree into place.

The last step is to add a hanger.  I'm using this gold thread I have.  You can use yarn or string even.

In order to get the truck to hang level attach the string to the back right after the cab of the truck.

I used red duct tape but you can use white or hot glue.

That's it.

Gail

Christmas Barn Scenes

I wanted a new Christmas art project for the bulletin board so this is what I came up with.

Grade 1 completed them today.













MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- white heavier paper for painting background, you also can cheat and just use light blue construction paper
- white sketch paper
- light blue, white, red, and green liquid tempera or acrylic paint
- corrugated cardboard
- white and black oil pastel
- black paper scraps
- white paper strips, I ran mine thru the paper shredder
- white glue
- gold and silver sequins
- red buttons
- golden/or silver stars

PROCEDURE:

Tape down your heavy painting paper.

If you are using light blue construction paper you can skip this step.

Paint light blue.

Paint some sketch paper red. This is for the barn.

Paint some paper green, this for the wreath and Christmas tree.

After the blue paint has dried take a white oil pastel.  Draw out your snow slopes and your trees.

This will be a guide for when we add our white paint.



You want trees on either side and space in middle for your barn.

For the far snow slope I painted with watered down paint.  I used dry brushing and straight paint for the slope in the foreground.


With Grade 1 we just used watery white paint as the dry brush was a bit difficult for them.

Now we are going to add white paint to the trees.

We are going to use a piece of corrugated cardboard, stamping the paint on with the end.

I would do the trunk of the tree first and then the branches.

I made templates for Grade 1 just to get the right size....they all end up looking different which I love.


Cut a barn shape out of the red paper.

With the white paper strips (I put printer paper thru the paper shredder), make the door for your barn.

For grade 1 I had them draw a rectangle in pencil first.

Glue into place.

For the roof, outline it with black pastel and smudge it a bit.

We will add some snow later.

For the wreath I turned over the green paper, I traced the inside of a masking tape to make a circle, this is my guideline.  I then drew a jagged line.  Cut on this jagged line.

To cut the inside, fold it and cut a jagged inner circle.

If you want you can add some texture to your wreath by adding flecks of different green pencil crayons.

Glue the wreath into place. With scraps of black paper cut a couple of windows. Glue into place.

Decorate the wreath.  I used sequins and some stars I punched from silver and gold wrapping paper.

I had some extra trees I punched for another project but you could cut a tree from the green painted paper.

I outlined and smudged with black pastel.  We did not have time for this  with Grade 1.

Add a little snow using the cardboard technique again.



You can then glue into place in the foreground and decorate it with sequins, red buttons and stars.

Add some snow to the roof.

We then smudged a little pastel in front of the barn
like the animals or tractor had trudged thru the snow,

Great work Grade 1.

See you next time.


Gail

Poppy Portraits

Every year I try to come up with a new art project for Remembrance Day.

This is the one we did this year.

This was with Grade 1 and it worked very well.













MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- paper for painting, we used watercolour for background and regular white paper for our poppies
- disk tempera paint in blue, yellow, and red
- oil pastels
- black and grey crayons 
- scissors and glue
- masking tape
- black paper, black buttons and poppy seeds
- printed paper with our remembrance day words

PROCEDURE:

I prepped art boards for all the students.  I taped off a border and then a section where the table will be.

We took oil pastels in dark blue, light blue and white and I had them draw circles in the large section of the paper.

Some were very ordered and precise with rows of circles and some just scribbled circles all over.  I found the scribbled circles tended to look better.

The students then painted the large section with blue disk tempera paint.




Set aside too dry.

While our background dries I gave them some extra paper.  One I crimped with my crimper for texture.

On the other piece I had them draw circles again with black and/or grey crayon.

We painted these papers.  I used red disk tempera for the paper with the crayon circles and red acrylic for the crimped.

I was trying to get 2 different shades of red.

Set aside too dry.

Back to the background.  I took the tape where the table is and moved it up so it was on the edge of the blue background.

Now with yellow disk tempera we painted in the table.

I made up sheets of repeating words in different fonts and sizes.  They were all related to Remembrance Day.


We painted them with some watery grey paint.  This is to make it less stark and darken the value (colour value) of this component.

Set aside too dry.

On the back of the paper with the words we draw out a vase.

Cut it out and glue into place on the background.  Make sure it is touching the table.

On the back of our red poppy paper we draw some poppies and cut them out.

You want at least 3.

Before we glue them on we use green pastel and draw in the stems and one or two leaves.

If they are different heights it looks better.



Glue poppies on.

For the centers we used 3 different materials:

- black paper
- black buttons
- poppy seeds

This gave each of them an interesting look and lots of discussion, especially about the poppy seeds.

Finally we outlined our vases with black oil pastel and smudged it a bit.

This helped to visually bring the vase forward in the composition.

That's it.  Great job Grade 1!


Gail