Crafting For A Cause...

Sorry...  I know I have kind of fallen off the Blogging radar... I've still been crafting, but for an unselfish purpose...  Every year my kids school auctions off class room art to raise money for our school... While I can't usually give $$$... I do have time... So, for the last month I have been treading water while being sucked into an art work vortex...  I was in charge of the three grades(2nd, 4th, and 5th)... Yes, I know I'm a little crazy... and somehow I roped two unsuspecting people into helping me(he he he... little did they know that 3grades= 3ways to lose my mind)...  Here's what the kids did...


Each 2nd grader folded an origami person, and colored in a face to look like them...

Their are two classes... so each picture is a little different...  With pieces of ripped Japanese newspaper, we created the border...





Starting with a big sheet of water color paper... I created a multi- media scenery... The mountains and tree limbs are fabric... the sky and grass are chalk...  and the river is water color (with salt sprinkled on while it's still wet... this gives it a cool crystallizing effect)

The cherry blossoms are tiny squares of tissue paper... placed... one... at... a ... time....



The teacher of one class wanted to be fly fishing... so I fashioned him some lures out of tissue and wire...



My kids go to a Japanese immersion school... we tried to replicate the sign we have outside the school doors...

There is so much going on in these pictures... the photo's don't do it justice... I also wanted to point out there are tiny origami butterflies and birds... If you look back at the first pics, you can see some in between the mountians

On To 4th Grade...

I created two hanging lights (one for each class) ... 

To create the shade, I wrapped a beach ball with jute that was soaked in a mixture of 3parts glue two one part water...  (let me just add that this was after a couple of failed attempts with some jumbo balloons... got to this point... and then they popped!  That was a bad day...)

My wonderful husband attached them to a pendant light....

Each 4th grader folded an origami flower....

I came up with stamen, using beads and wire... so I could attach the flowers to the shades... (my trusty helpers probably didn't think it was so great as they were twisting the wire to make them...) 

The result was perfect...

On To 5th Grade...

Using 1000 cranes folded by both fifth grade classes...  I created this landscape... (if you use imaginative thinking...it's suppose to be sky, hills, and a river)



No two cranes were alike... 

Row by row... I placed each crane... layering them on top of each other... very time consuming...

 

Slowly... a picture emerged... 

So... That is what I've been up to... long days... working non stop...  crafting till my little finger can craft no more...  I am proud to say that all of our hard work (on these art pieces) pulled in almost $1900...  So worth it!!!  The best part of all, was going to the auction... it was 1920's themed... Sooooo much fun to dress up!

Here I am putting on the Ritz...  

Happy Crafting!

***Jennifer