Laurel Burch Cats

Laurel Burch was a self-taught American painter/folk artist.

She died young at age 62 from a bone disease but even during the time when she was sick and had to paint in bed or from her wheelchair, she never stopped creating.  She said, "I refuse to have anything in my life that I can't turn around into something magical and beautiful.  I just refuse."

She has a great imagination.  Joy and happiness came through in her paintings with her bold lines and bright colors.  Her cats are so fun and whimsical!  My students love her work and they made some great versions of their own cats too!  Check this out...

Materials needed:

-White paper

-Colored paper (We had a pad of donated scrapbooking paper that had awesome colors and patterns)

-Crayons

-Scissors

-Glue

Directions:

1.  Students followed my step by step instructions for drawing the cat face.  (step by step tutorial coming soon)

2.  Color in the cat face, encourage different bright colors

3.  Select 2 fun pieces of colored paper, fold them into a triangle and cut them in half.

4.  Glue 2 halves onto a whole piece (this is your background)

5.  Cut out the cat face and glue it on the background

6.  Add lines, whiskers, and anything you feel it needs.

Monet's Waterlillies

Inspired by Monet's Waterlillies paintings, we wanted to create our own!

Materials needed:

-Heavy weight water color paper

-Tempera paint, only blues, greens, and white for mixing

-Paint brushes

-Green construction paper

-Tissue paper

-Pencils

-Glue

Directions:

1.  Show examples of Monet's Waterlillies.  Talk about the softness of the paintings, soft edges, soft colors.

2.  Have the students paint the water first.  Encourage color mixing; shades of blues, greens.

3.  While the paper is drying, have students draw and cut out 3 lily pads.  You can offer them a template to trace, if needed. 

4.  For the lily pad flowers, have little scraps of tissue paper that students can wrap around the eraser end of a pencil, dip in a little glue and then stick it to the middle of the lily pad.   A few tissue paper flowers per lily pad is perfect.

5.  Once painting is dry, then glue the lily pads to the painting and voila!   A mini-masterpiece!

Fall Leaf Centerpiece

Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner...this wonderful fall leaf inspired centerpiece!

Materials needed:

For Leaves
- Watercolor paper
- BLEEDING tissue paper, cut up in squares, using only fall colors
- Paintbrushes
-Cups of water
-Leaf templates
-Pencils
-Scissors
- Sticks
- Hot glue


For Pots
- Tempera or Acrylic Paint in fall colors
- Paintbrushes
- Marbles or rocks (to weigh down the pots)
- Spanish moss

Directions:
1. To create the leaves, start with one big piece of watercolor paper and place squares of the bleeding tissue paper, overlapping pieces, using a brush dipped in water to temporarily "glue" them onto the paper.  The water is what transfers the color off the tissue onto the watercolor paper so make sure the kids make it wet enough!
2.  Once the entire piece of watercolor paper in covered in tissue paper squares, gently remove all the tissue paper.  (it's okay if the paper is not dry yet)  The kids love this part.
3.  Once paper is dry, trace as many leaf templates onto the paper then cut out the leaf shape.
4.  Hot glue the stick intbetween 2 paper leaves and stick it in the pot!