Paper Bag Elephants

I wanted to do something with the scraps from our shaving cream project, 

and came up with this multi-media project, inspired by this post.

The kids looked at photos of elephants and discussed their features.

They drew a simple elephant onto a brown paper bag. 

The drawings were traced in black ink.

Using a wet paintbrush the black outlines were smeared to give the paper a grayish tint.

After drying and being cut-out, the elephants were gently crumbled.

They were flattened back out, but wrinkles were left resembling the wrinkles in an elephant's skin.

On another paper, African sunset landscapes were created, using oil and chalk pastels.

The colorful frame (saved from our shaving cream project) and paper bag elephant were pasted onto the African landscape to complete this project.

The Art Room

Nothing beats having a room in the house called "The Art Room".

There is no shortage of art supplies here.

My little artists have everything they could need at their fingertips.

For some reason I love clear jars. It's a bonus that displaying supplies this way eliminates the searching or trying to remember where things were stored. 

These handy caddies were meant to be herb planters.

I found them in the garden section at Kirklands and grew some crayons and stuff instead.

The walls are painted a very light gray (Sherwin Williams - Cold Morning).
One of my current obsessions is spray painting and repurposing items instead of buying anything new.
I found a few white spraying painting projects in this room....

the shelves, table, stools, pots, cubbies (pretty much everthing). I like the way the colorful art supplies look against the light walls and all that white.