Today I was Arts n’ Crafts Lady at the Compass School Eco Fair.
I needed to come up with some crafts for about 200 people, oh and they needed to be free, and environmentally responsible.
Piece of Cake!
First I re-introduced the 1970’s “Gods-eyes”. It’s a form of weaving around sticks but, we renamed them Owl’s-eyes to go with the fair’s mascot, Eco the Owl.
I had sent out a request for yarn via this blog and Facebook and the results were amazing. Friends mailed me yarn samples from their quilt shop (Thank you Cheryl! and a knitting circle (Thank you Heidi!) as well as some of my mother’s artsy-crafters friends from New York who sent some of their amazing threads (thanks Suzanne and the gang!). I wound up with a massive bin of yarn, tons of sticks I collected in the woods and at least 50-60 boys, girls and adults addicted to Gods-eye making! I rolled out some blankets and people leisurely sat and wove from 11am-3pm. I also had great volunteers that helped me tie about 2000 knots today too. Thank you guys! Especially my mother who came to see her grandkids and instead worked the Owl’s-eye booth for hours. I’m pretty sure she got a fill of kids alright!
My other booth was rock painting.
The idea was to scavenge enough old cans of house paint that we would be “re-using” paint instead of buying it. That was quite easy to find actually and those small cups of paint were enough to last 4 hours without refills. Fairly minimal impact for a full day of fun.
The gardens at the school had just recently been renovated, so I asked the kids to create these rocks for the campus. I thought they would be a great visual reminder that the school is a happy fun place to be.
The kids did a terrific job. The table pretty much ran itself. The kids were responsible, and amazingly clean! I was worried there’d be paint all over the ground, on their clothes, all over the campus. Nope, they were so serious. They came up to the station, painted and walked away without a blemish. I am telling you, I had ZERO paper towels. I had 4 wet rags and a wash-your-hands bucket and they were all clean at the end of the day. Either that was a complete and total fluke or we just have some super cool responsible kids…I go with the latter! It was such a pleasure to spend my day with these kids who really like to work with their hands and really had such amazing attention spans. They saw everything through. It was awesome.
At the end of the fair, we placed all the rocks in the gardens and as I turned back, I thought to myself “man, I sure love being the Arts n’ Crafts Lady!”
I will sleep well tonight let me tell you!
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Fabulous Mary ! That will be a day everyone will remember for sure . Great faces and animals on those rocks the children painted- they have the best imaginations :-)
I’m so glad you took so many photos and put them up on your site, How much fun is this??? I love the snake rocks and all the characters now in the school garden. And, the Owl’s eyes on sticks…great!! The boys and girls look totally engrossed in their art. Good job, arts and crafts lady!
LOVE the crafts! They look amazing around the campus. Hats off to you proving yet again, simple, fun can be creative!
I introduced the God’s Eye technique to a few of my students as an alternative way to frame their quilt squares. It was a bit awkward making a frame but two of my girls persevered and successfully created beautifully finished projects. I have a lot of twigs so I think I’m going to reintroduce this as a year end weaving project. Thanks for inspiring me to do this again. I know the kids will love it.
In this bin of yarn, the kids found lacey string, fluffy string and feathery string. Also very thick vs. very thin. I am telling you, these God’s-eyes were drop dead gorgeous and I think it was because of the different textures. Keep that in mind as your searching for yarn!