Summer Arts & Crafts Camp

I excitedly registered my kids for classes in our city's arts festival after the fabulous experience we had last year. My oldest will be jamming with a bluegrass ensemble and getting a first time lesson in songwriting (I want to be a fly on the wall for this one) with Cherie Call.

My youngest sons are taking a LEGO art class that *gasp* had an extra $43.00 fee (on top of the class $30.00 fee) for Legos and storage bins. I gulped down my summer savings anxiety and signed them up, like I said...last year's classes did not disappoint.

But I am chomping at the bit to create, and trying to purge some of my old scrapbook papers and stickers that I will probably never use. I have declared all summer Mommy's Art & Crafts Camp, and will feel free to create (and buy) as my artistic needs arise. That's fair, right?

First Project- Crystal Light Canisters
Cyrstal Light canisters are clean and durable and break my heart to throw away, so I covered these with scrapbook paper- with a little stamping and personalizing. The first one I made I added extra glue- and you can see the squiggles under the paper, which I hate, so skip that and stick with double stick tape on all edges of the paper (a 6'x9' piece)- roll and smooth to stick on.
No need to take off the original wrapper if your paper isn't see through. I have markers and brushes in mine. I imagine ribbon and tags would be cute on these too, but I tend to be impatient and wanted to keep these simple today.

Next is my "About Me" album which is an ongoing process. I finished 2 more pages, making me close to half way done with the book.

The first page is Strengths and Weaknesses- funny how the weaknesses are hidden in a file behind the strengths. It was a fun one to ponder as I worked on it, and I believe this the first picture from my 'CATS" role that I have scrapbooked. What took me so long?



The second page is the Labels page, which I thought sounded kind of dorky in the instruction book. BUT- there was a similar DARE a couple of months ago which made me go ahead and give this page a shot instead of trashing it to do my own thing.
Now I am in LOVE with this page. From a little tag stolen from my most comfy pair of jeans to a cafe' logo from New York, just looking at this page makes me happy. I would have never thought of this cute "label/tag" idea on my own, and I love it. I think labels, tags, and advertising bits would be great in collages so I am going to start stashing these away a lot more.

It is a good start. Summer is already rolling along so quick and I don't have near as much computer time as I do when the kids are gone during the day. Being creative keeps me sane and much like blogging, make me reflects on the ups and downs that are my life.