As I mentioned in my previous post, I am back on track with our Monthly Unplugged Projects in 2011!
The theme for January’s Unplugged Project is:
Messages
Anyone can join in the Unplugged Project. Be creative! Any connection to the theme is fine. I try to pick a very general theme each time so that each project and interpretation will be unique.
If you have an interpretation of the theme messages to share, please review the information on how to join us here. You have until February 1st to post your link.
(NOTE: Please only link to “messages”-related projects. I will have to remove unrelated links, no matter how nice your website. A link to Unplug Your Kids in your project post would be greatly appreciated too! :-) )
I have been so busy sorting and de-junking my house, that I have had little time to blog and my Monthly Unplugged Project has fallen a bit by the wayside.
Even though we are already halfway through November, here is a theme that we can perhaps do before the end of November since, in the United States, the Thanksgiving Holiday is coming up next week and many of us are already thinking about how to give thanks.
How do you give thanks? Do you have projects, artwork, crafts that fit the theme of giving thanks?
Join in and have fun! If you have never joined us before, please consider it. You can read more about how it works here.
I’ll start it off with a link to a “thankful” project that we invented and enjoyed.
(Please only link to “giving thanks”-related projects. I will have to remove unrelated links, no matter how nice your website.)
Again, I am LATE! The problem with trying to be unplugged is, well, you are often unplugged. I guess that is a good thing.
The theme for this month’s Unplugged Project is the very open-ended concept of:
Pretty
Have fun and be creative! If you have never joined us before, please consider it. You can read more about how it works here.
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!
We are having a busy summer of travel, playing outside with friends, refurbishing and cleaning my precious old doll house (that is finally out of my Dad’s New York attic and home with us in Arizona!), sprinklers, popsicles, etc. How about you?
I have been blogging even less than usual and have even thought about taking a little official summer break of my own, but I guess I’ll just keep up minimally, as best I can when activities allow. So, I am late again with this month’s Unplugged Project theme, but here it is:
Beach
This seems appropriate for those of us enjoying summer here in the northern hemisphere, as well as for residents of the southern hemisphere who might appreciate a little virtual escape from winter’s chill right about now (am I correct?).
You can blog (or leave a comment) about anything remotely related to the theme beach. Perhaps something as simple as a trip to the beach, or perhaps a project you made with sand (like the permanent sand castles we made long ago for the Unplugged Project theme hard, or sand pictures that we made for the theme sand, or your own inspiration), or something sun or water-related? Pretty much anything goes.
If you are unfamiliar with how the Monthly Unplugged Project works, then please read more here and consider joining in, even if only via a comment. Just unplug, have fun, and tell us what you did!
(You’ll have to plug back in again for that last bit, but you can be quick, right?)
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