Art To Wear

The Brownie Troop recently finished the Art To Wear try-it.  It was one that they pretty much had a consensus wanting to do, then they voted to see which parts they would do.  They picked:  macrame/friendship bracelets, face painting, paper mache, and making masks.  One week we made masks out of paper plates and construction paper.  They did a nice job with them and it was a fun meeting.  Another week we had a friend come and paint the girls' hand.  While people were waiting to have their hand painted, we worked on making friendship bracelets from kitchen cotton.  There were two models - each had four strands of cotton, one had granny knots (making a spiral) and one had square knots (making something like a ladder).  The girls' bracelets were pretty much "free-form".  :)

Paper mache was holding us back - it was getting darker earlier, and colder.  It seemed too messy of a project to do in an hour in the Sunday school classroom where we meet.  So, we tried something else.  My co-leader and I made a whole slew of the Purl Bee's 20 minute totes out of unbleached muslin, with extra wide twill tape for handles.

The first try was with fabric crayons.  The girls each made a picture with fabric crayons on printer paper.  There were a couple of problems with this:  the selection and trueness of colors was disappointing, then as soon as you mention that the images come out in reverse everyone needs to write letters in their image, and finally the ironing on was so pale that you couldn't see the picutres at all.  This was not good. 
 
I exchanged the fabric crayons for fabric markers.  The next week, the girls decorated their bags with the markers and it was a lot of fun.  Except for my daughter.  She had a melt down because she didn't get the same bag as her friend.  [I only mention this because it ended up turning out well.]
 
Later on, at home, La decided to work on the bag she was given.  (Yay!)  But then she messed it up.  On both sides (boo).  So once she was done being mad and ready to listen, we talked about other options.  One idea (inspired by Gerrie Congdon's blog) was to color/scribble on it with the pens, then try to discharge it with a bleach pen.  This did not work well, although, maybe we could have left it on longer.  When we were shopping for something else in Joann's we saw repositionable stencils.  So we bought one of a skull and crossbones, cosmetic sponges, and a jar of hot pink Jaquard paint.  We had some purple, turquoise, and dark red at home already.  This was a winner.  All through the process, El wanted to make one too, so she took the original faint iron on panels and used those.  This is what we ended up with.  I'm very impressed that La was able to keep going and try something else with the project when one thing or the other didn't turn out exactly the right way.