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By Mom Unplugged, August 2, 2010 2:01 pm

TURN YOUR DINNER INTO ART!

As is my pattern these days, I am a day or two late in posting our project for July’s Unplugged Project theme of beach.  Oh well!

I am such a packrat that I have had these clam shells sitting around all summer.  In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that I saved them from a fabulous meal in Upstate New York back in June and brought them all the way home with me!  (I just don’t really trust Arizona seafood.) We soaked them in hot soapy water right away after eating to clean off any grease and smell.

We used a dremel tool to drill a small hole in each one.  You’ll need a good masonry drill or dremel bit for this since, as we discovered, clam shells are quite hard.

Before we began painting, we soaked them again, this time overnight in pure bleach just to get rid of the last lingering slightly clammy smell. We then rinsed them off in cold water and let them dry.

Next we painted the outside of them bright colors. (I think it would also have been a pretty project with them left as-is, but my daughter wanted them to be colorful since this was to hang in her room.)

After the paint dried, we decided to splatter them with gold paint using old toothbrushes.  Fun but a bit messy!

We left the inside natural, but you could paint that too if you want.

After they had dried completely (overnight), we strung a piece of fishing line through each one.  My daughter brought in four sticks from the yard to make the frames for hanging them.

We tied each pair of sticks together in the form of a cross using yarn and then hung one shell off each arm of one of the crosses.  We suspended the second cross below the first using yarn to create a second tier.  We again tied one shell onto each arm and hung our final one much lower from the center.

Voilà!

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By Mom Unplugged, October 19, 2009 1:25 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was “The Letter B.” We made treasure jars.  What is the relationship between treasure jars and “B”?  The children decorated their jars with dried beans and barley (and some of our colored rice, not “B,” but pretty!).  The Unplugged Project is as flexible as you need it to be.

I just gave the kids some white glue and the beans, barley and rice.  Then they chose jars from my packrat collection of “Useful Looking Jars” and went happily to work on their own while I made dinner.

By the way, this is a good toddler project too (great for exercising fine motor skills), as long as you don’t mind mess.  I recommend using a vinyl craft tablecloth and having a wet washcloth and a vacuum cleaner nearby.

Here are the results. My 3 year-old made the jar on the left, and my 9 year-old made the one on the right.  My 7 year-old son just made a big mess mixing things together, but he enjoyed himself.

I finished by spraying them with an acrylic coating to help keep things in place.

Remember, projects don’t have to be fancy or complicated to be fun!

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If you did a “Letter B” Unplugged Project with us this week, then please link to your project post in the Linky below.  If you don’t have a blog, you can leave a comment with a description of what you did.  If you didn’t do a “Letter B” project, then please read about how to join in here, we’d love to have you!

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Change

See you then!

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By Mom Unplugged, September 20, 2009 9:48 pm

We all had a lovely time flipping rocks this morning for the 3rd Annual International Rock Flipping Day!  Honestly, I could not have imagined that rock flipping could be so interesting, but my children, my husband and I all had the best time wandering around flipping rocks (and putting them carefully back of course).

The children ran through our yard and the woods by our house searching for perfect rocks:

We learned that our rocks here are quite beautiful, very volcanic and full of holes:

This one actually showed a distinct lava flow pattern on it:

Under our rocks we discovered:

Mold:

A small mushroom that grew up in the shade of two tightly stacked rocks:

A baby centipede  -  a teeny tiny yellow thread with lots of legs.  I apologize for the bad picture, but much of what we found was very small and hard to photograph:

Strange white beetles with legs and antennae, barely the size of a grain of rice:

The much expected “Rollie Pollies”  or Pill Bugs, but these guys were whiter than we had ever seen before:

Ants, LOTS of ants and eggs.  Much to our surprise we found that ants don’t just live underground, but actually use the holes in our volcanic rocks as homes and nurseries!

You can even see little dots inside the ant eggs in this photo, Each collection of eggs seemed to have a “nurse ant” to go with it:

A peanut that had been buried (and probably forgotten) by a squirrel – round thing in the middle of the photo:

A small cricket:

Mystery eggs? Not ant eggs and about the size of small beads. Any ideas?

A spider on a pretty rock.  Can you see it?:

What did you find under rocks where you live? Email Susannah of Wanderin’ Weeta with a link to your post, or upload your photos to the Flickr International Rock Flipping Day Group.

I will post our feather Unplugged Project and the Linky tomorrow afternoon or evening.

Hope to see you then!

PS. Thank you Susannah for our Junior Rock Flipping Badge.  The kids will be excited about this tomorrow morning!

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By Mom Unplugged, September 8, 2009 1:18 pm

As I am sure you all know, September 20th, 2009 is the 3rd Annual International Rock Flipping Day.

Oh, you didn’t know that?  Well, on September 20th take your kids outside, choose a rock to flip, then:

1)  Record what you find. “Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry.”

2)  Replace the rock as you found it; it’s someone’s home. But if there are critters underneath, move them to the side before you replace the rock and let them scurry back.  You don’t want to squash anyone.

3)  Post on your blog, or load your photos to the International Rock Flipping Day Flickr group.

4)  Send a link to Susannah at Wanderin’ Weeta. Her e-mail address is in her profile.

5)  Susannah will collect the links, e-mail participants the list, and post it for any and all to copy to their own blogs.

6)  She also says: “Maybe we can Tweet it, too, this year. Use the hashtag #rockflip.” (NOTE FROM ME:  This information is totally beyond my comprehension, but if you understand Tweeting, then give it a go that way and I will be impressed.)

(All instructions are from Wanderin’ Weeta’s blog – edited slightly by me)

I love this idea because it reminds me of something I did in very early elementary school (Kindergarten? 1st Grade?).  We went out and measured a one foot by one foot square of dirt behind the school, and then we had to look closely and draw what we saw in that square.  Obviously it made an impression since I remember that lesson VERY many years later!

So go ahead, take the badge, the link, and the instructions, and pass it on.

It’ll be fun and interesting, so please join in! We’ll be there! (…and September 20th is even my sister’s birthday…)

NOTE:  More on the history of Rock Flipping Day at Wanderin’ Weeta’s.

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By Mom Unplugged, September 6, 2009 9:41 pm

This week’s Unplugged Project theme was ocean.  Not having anything in mind when I chose the theme (it was the first thing that popped into my head as I wrote last week’s post), I decided we should try an art technique that I have been wanting to experiment with for some time.

Well, my plans fell through a bit.  The two oldest were invited to a sleepover tonight and the little one needed to go to bed, so I decided to go solo on this week’s Unplugged Project.

I am not sure what this is called, but I call it “sandpaper transfer.”  It is super easy and produces really remarkable results!

All you need is sandpaper (I used a coarse grain and a fine grain to see what different results I would get), crayons (we have PLENTY of those), and an iron.

Draw a picture on the sandpaper and color it in with crayons.  Of course I chose an ocean theme (plus sand is found by the ocean, so sandpaper fit the theme too, right?).

I drew a colorful fish on the coarsest grain of paper and a green/blue/brown artsy ocean wave scene on the finest grain.  Be sure to press hard for best results.

The next step is the really exciting one!  Place the sandpaper picture-side down on top of a sheet of paper (or cardstock, which I used).  Iron over the top.  It will only take one or two passes of the iron to transfer the image.

NOTE:  Don’t iron too much or you might notice wax soaking through the sandpaper backing and onto your iron.  Also, if you use paper rather than cardstock, I would recommend putting an old towel underneath the paper so melted wax doesn’t soak through onto your ironing board.

Peel off the sandpaper and you will “ooh and aah” over what you have produced!

This is the coarse-grained fish:

Here is the fine-grained ocean:

Quite different results.

These are very pretty on their own, or they would make a great backdrop for more coloring, collage, paint, stickers … anything you want!

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If you did an ocean Unplugged Project this week, then thank you!  Please link to your project post below.  If you don’t have an ocean project to share, then please do not link.  You can read more about how to join in here.  Everyone is welcome, and the more Unplugged Projects we have, the more fun and inspirational it is for all of us!

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Sound

I don’t know what we’ll do yet.  What would you do?

Have fun and please join in!

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