Paid it Foward

Almost two weeks ago I read a post on Snippety Gibbet about the idea of paying it forward. You reply to a post and then make the same offer on your blog. In return you receive a gift. This offer seems to be traveling around the craft and art blogs.
I had to jump on that because I had been reading Snippety Gibbet for quite a while and I knew that she is very creative and that her gift would be something interesting.
Today a box arrived in the mail. Bo and I were very excited!
So I rushed inside to open it up. Wow, bubble wrap the tension was palatable. Bo could hardly stand it.

So I peeled back the bubble wrap and there I was looking back at me!It also came with a variety of outfits,
Lederhosen Me.

Pirate Me.

Before Jan came home I found a place of honor for the portrait of me. Jan suggested I hang it in my classroom, what's up with that?

Pay It Foward

My RSS feed has close to 200 blogs that I try and read. This is becoming close to impossible to do while holding a full time job. And so far I haven't found a way to make a living being a full time blog reader. So I've started to create sub folders. And then sub-sub folders.
This is a reply to a blog that has made the cut to that rarefied group, Snippety Gibbet. I enjoy reading this blog because it is a connection to a world of art and crafting as well as a bike ride or two. Today the post was on "Paying it Foward" This is kinda like one of those pesky chain letters or emails. But rather than something dire happening to me if I did not follow the instructions of sending it on the post came with a promice of a mystery gift made by the author of the post.
OK I was intrigued with this so I followed the thread back on her post. This lead me to "Pink Feather Paradise" and from there I was lead to "The ramblings of an everday mummy" . Both of these blogs are very cool craft and such blogs.

Well here is what this is all about.....
Here's the "official" part I lifted from her blog: "The first three people to leave a comment will receive a hand made gift from me
the only thing you have to do is participate and carry on the gift giving to three more people...
as soon as you have left a comment do a "pay it forward post" on your blog and continue the giving.
I will contact the first three comentee's to get their addresses."

Green Friday

Most times I have blogged in the past it has been an exercise in personal reflection or something has my dander up. This is different, like an assignment, sort of.

OK, a green classroom/art program.

At first I could not think of ways that that my art class was green. With the number of students I teach we run through quite a bit of paper and the sharpeners on the tables grind through a forest of pencils. But we do have a recycling program at our school so some of that paper ends up in the recycle bin and the kids are not using electricity with the hand sharpeners (plus getting a little exercise).

So I started looking around my room to see what I do that could be considered “green”. First I noticed this pile of cardboard that I pulled out of the dumpster a while back. I used these as part of a descriptive drawing lesson.

Next I saw my buckets of recycled clay. I only buy clay 2 of every 3 years. On the third year I use all the scraps from the previous years. This also helps my budget. I also help my budget by collecting crayons that are broken. Often classroom teacher have boxes of broken crayons at the end of the year that they would throw out If I did not collect them. I always tell the kids that crayons are one of the few things that work just as well broken as whole.

All of the small containers that I use on the tables are recycled. Plastic cups and plastic food containers. All different shapes and sizes. I even have some plastic cafeteria style plates and bowls that I saved when the district stopped using washable dishes and went to throwaway Styrofoam trays.

Many of the tools I use in the art room are recycled. Recycling seems to be a natural part of the creative process, seeing something new in an object. One of my students favorite projects are the Art Rockets. In this project we recycle plastic into rockets that we then blast off.

Our district has gone green with the art curriculum in recommending a digital version of the art textbooks we use. These take up a lot less space and no trees are cut down for them. Just 5 CDs.

On a personal art note this year I am creating a picture a day and posting them on Flickr. 365 images in this project and no paper, film or chemicals are used. I’m not sure how this project will be shown at our yearly teacher art show. But the way technology changes I’m sure by then I’ll have a way to display them.

Now if I could only figure out how to recycle minutes so I would have more time.