Our Garden Art 2014

Our house is located on the corner of our subdivision. It's actually a really busy corner and one of just a few access points for our neighborhood, so MANY people turn in and drive by our front yard everyday (sometimes multiple times a day). I feel a certain amount of responsibility to represent our neighborhood well and always like our front landscape bed to look nice. Plus, I just enjoy making our yard look pretty! Here is this year's version of our garden art!

I feel I have finally discovered how to make a DURABLE painted flower pot! One of our pour-paint pots from last year did survive and I have that by our front door this year:

I didn't seal the inside or the outside of our flower pots last year with pottery sealer. And I didn't seal the outside right away with polyurethane spray so by the end of the summer the paint was bubbling up and peeling off. I learned from this and have improved our technique this year.

The paint we used this year would not be good for pour-paint unless thinned because it is too thick to run down the sides of the pot. You would also have to buy quite a bit of paint to achieve the pour paint look. HOWEVER, this paint is EXCELLENT for painting designs on the pot!

Photo credit: Decoart

Photo credit: Michaels

Both of these brands of paint worked great! And have withstood over 5 inches of rain in the month of June alone. The only difference is that the Folk Art covers more quickly and the Patio Paint requires multiple coats to cover completely.

Before we did anything this year, I sealed the inside and the outside of our pots with Pottery Sealer like this from Michaels:

Photo credit: Michaels

Here are our painted masterpieces for this year:

My painted pot

My 10 year old working on her pot. She came up with this absolutely AMAZING impressionist-type paint style that turned out just GORGEOUS! I cannot begin to tell you how much I love love love this pot! And how impressed I was with it!

Her work space!

Finished pot in the landscape bed.

After we painted the pots and they dried, I sealed them with the pottery sealer again and then one last protective coat of polyurethane spray. That seemed to do the trick as this paint has lasted amazingly well so far this summer!

I also used the paint above to paint this garden lantern:

It was white when I purchased it from Michael's. I used alcohol ink on the glass. You can see it partially done in the photo below:

I painted the lantern and then sealed the whole thing with polyurethane spray. The alcohol ink has stood up to the weather elements, but it has faded a bit from the sun. Overall, I'm pleased with how well it's standing up to nature.

The landscape bed when we first finished it this spring.

We also created a couple pots to gift to people. I think these turned out really fun!

My 8 year old's pot.

I used our "created by" stamps to label the bottom of the pots by painting the stamp with the patio paint and then spraying the bottom with polyurethane spray.

Happy Fourth of July! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday this week!!

Summer Recap: Independent Craftiness

Okay, so I admit it. We kind of got away from our weekly artist lessons this summer. I'm sort of bummed about this because I really enjoy doing those projects with the girls. But, this summer just kind of got away from us! It flew right by and before I knew it, they were heading back to school.

We had a great and fun summer! But I guess we just focused on other things. The girls summer bridge work in the mornings, we had books to read for a book club we were in together, not to mention minutes to read for there summer reading log on top of all that. So I guess we focused more on academics this summer instead of planned art activities. But the girls still did art camps at Kidcreate. They created fun things like these candy beach scenes!

Ha ha! Do you see the marshmallow people in the chairs? See one of them is pink? That's because that one is sunburned! LOL!

I did ask them to create some LegoQuest projects. In this one, they were asked to create an outdoor scene. I told them it could be anything, a park, ocean, whatever they wanted!

My ten year old's Arboretum complete with bridge, stream, and "path with lights on the side".

 LOVE the "No Picking" sign with the park security guard there. :-)

My 8 year old's beach scene complete with sand castle and person laying in the sand by the water.

But, honestly, what I think is one of the neatest things about this summer is that our art room was used ALL the time! Just not for projects I was leading. The kids, all three of them, just went up there whenever they wanted and created things. They came up with their own projects, figured out what they needed for them, sat down, and produced some fun and amazing things!

My three year old just sat down one night (hence the yucky red light and terrible iphone photos!) and did his own thing. It was so fun to watch!

And this is what he created, his first artwork all on his own!

I think it should be entitled "Alien Spaceship". He couldn't verbalize to me exactly what he was making, but in watching him, it was very purposeful. And here is the aftermath of his creating. ;-)

My younger daughter crafted this owl pillow completely on her own:

Also, this beautiful chalk wall on the side of our garage:

A wrapping paper version of herself on her bedroom wall:

And a plan for a birdhouse (she is getting a kit to make one for her birthday in a few weeks):

My 10 year old daughter was also inspired this summer and created this winter fairy garden based on a project she found in our Jumbo Book of Outdoor Art book:

She also created this Minion ipod holder out of duct tape:

And just a couple other fun random creations from the summer:

Lily made a little fort/tent for her and Kellan to play under. It included a "tv" as well. She hung the iPad from the back of the couch. :-)

 And a wine cork person just for the fun of it.

I'm sort of proud that I have set the foundation for my children to find the supplies they need and just create to their heart's content. It makes me so happy to see them inspired by so many things and even though I missed doing our projects together, it was almost better to leave them be and see what they came up with on their own!