Update:
The winner is #1 – Emily! (winner selected by random.org)
Emily, I’ll be in touch to get your mailing address and send it along. Congratulations! The rest of you can purchase a copy of the book through the link below, or at your local bookstore.
At least a couple years ago, I stumbled across A Little Hut, the blog of the fabulous designer and paper crafter Patricia Zapata. I was thrilled to learn she was working on a book, and even more thrilled when it came out. I ordered it immediately, and flipped through it just a few days before we left for vacation. I was as happy with it as I thought I’d be, but didn’t have a chance to really look it over until this past week. So I wanted to tell you about it.
The book, Home, Paper, Scissors, features 33 crafts using little more than paper, glue and scissors. Her minimalist aesthetic pleases me to no end, but she reminds you again and again that with creatively patterned paper and easy-to-buy (or less easy to make) paper embellishments you can adjust these projects to fit any home decor style. Not to mention that anyone on a tight budget or with little to no crafting experience can feel comfortable with projects that involve only the items we used during kindergarten craft time.
At the beginning is an informative introduction to papercraft with a brief glossary of paper terms that the uninitiated will find helpful. The book is broken into sections featuring decorations, entertaining and gifting. Many of the projects would be perfect for children, and the results are surprisingly beautiful (at least surprising for those not already familiar with Zapata’s work).
I like this book so much, I’m giving a copy away. If you’d like a copy, just leave a comment telling me about your favorite school art project. I’ll choose a random winner on Friday morning.
If you aren’t the winner, you can purchase your own copy here:
Article by Kelli. She's the primary caretaker of this here site. Hope you're enjoying your visit. 
ooooohhhh, me me! pick me!
On our living room bookshelf growing up were some ancient children’s encyclopedias that I loved. I can still smell the sent of them…old dusty books that my mom had found and just couldn’t throw away. (can you imagine?!) Book #7 was my favorite because it was all about crafts and art. In it were instructions to create a paper origami balloon that you actually blew air into to make it pop open. It was awesome! I quickly mastered the paper balloon and would make them over and over. I loved to impress my friends with my new talent. I would use anything to make paper balloons…napkins, pew cards during church, or even sheets of paper torn from LLBean magazines that were laying around the house. Just a few months ago I was fiddling with a sheet of paper to pass time and I remembered how to make the paper balloon. I was just as excited to make one at age 29 as I was at age 8! I love paper!
i want it so bad! but i can’t think of anything that i made. it was too long ago! i did like one that my kids did at a storytime…it was flowers made of folded coffee filters then painted with water colors so the colors ran. they looked tiedyed. very cool!
So this isn’t something I did in school, but rather something I did with my Energy express kids this summer.
We read a book about race cars and didn’t have a lot of time to do a big art project that I would have liked to do. So we used match box cars and rolled them through paint. Then the kids got to use the cars to make a design on a big piece of paper. The final products for all the kids turned out great. I loved the way the colors rolled together and the different textures of the tires created really cool designs.
And the kids got to get messy–which they loved too.
I remember my elementary school art teacher who had a box we all referred to as the “treasure box”. It was a collection of stuff most people would throw away – scraps of yarn, pieces of torn paper, small patches of fabric and the like. On Fridays, all of our projects started in the “treasure box”. Each student would pull a few items out – ponder their future use, and then set out on an adventure in creativity. To this day, I rarely throw anything away before considering if it could be a “treasure box” item for my own kids. It was one of the greatest ways to build creativity in young kids.
Nothing really stands out from school art projects. I am, however, still fascinated with magazine bowls
My favorite school art project was actually also my least favorite. In high school we did a lesson on pointilism and for some crazy reason, I decided to do an 11×14 canvas. Huh-Ated the next month of my life. But now, years later, I’m so in love with the finished project. It’s hanging in my office accross from my desk so I can see it everyday!
wow, i love that book, too! i haven’t bought it just yet, am putting it on my holiday wishlist! [unless i win it here!!]
loved doing that!!
Reading the question for the giveaway immediately reminded me of making tissue paper covered shapes. You know, when you take a small square of tissue, wrap it around the end of a pencil, then glue it down so it’s almost like a flower, and cover the whole cut-out shape with that. ends up like a fluffy paper carpet
One of my all-time favorite art projects is from my 2D design class in college, but kids can do it too. I just did it today with the kids in the Artastic class that I am teaching. It’s called “Finish the Picture” and you take a small clipping of a magazine photo and draw what you think the rest of the photo looked like. It’s cool because it can just be patterns or you can go more realistic. The ones the kids did today turned out really nice.
My fave school art project dates waaaaay back to 7th grade and involved sandpaper, blue, green, and purple crayons, a pot of irises, an old piece of a bed sheet, and an iron… I had to turn the drawing in a day late, because I’d been out sick. Gave it to the substitute teacher who happened to be there that day, and she thought it was a personal gift I’d made for her – how awkward!
We did some really cool projects involving clay and metal in elementary school that I know turned out awful, but it was so fun to have access to all the different materials.
My kindergarten teacher had a ton of awesome arts and craft projects, but I liked projects that involving gluing little squares of tissue paper to make mosaics.
One that stands out to me was of a fish kite made out of bright colored tissue paper. I was in second grade. Our class enjoyed making them. They were all sorts of bright colors and the amazing thing was, is that they really flew. We had to cut the fish shape out of two pieces of tissue paper. We then glued the two pieces together leaving hole for the mouth. We used a paper tube to glue into this opening in the mouth. I was very proud of my creation. I wanted to take mine home, however, we had to leave the kites at school to be displayed for a couple of weeks. I went home and tried to make another beautiful kite. I did ok until I realized I didn’t have a tube for the mouth…..so I thought I’d improvise using a lid from a shampoo bottle. I thought I’d be able to CUT the top off with Daddy’s razor. BAD IDEA…..I about sliced my finger off. I still have the scar to remind me……. Lesson Learned! DON’T EVER USE RAZOR TO CUT THINGS!
my favorite childhood art project was made during VBS. It is a bread basket made out of popsicle sticks. I still have it and it’s still awesome.