Special Issue: Josephine ~~ Guest Blogger!

Hello!   I am Melinda's friend Josephine and I am very honored to be a guest blogger on her "Flying by the Seat of My Creative Pants" blog!!
      Recently, my sister Mary asked me to help her with a project, she was planning a dance for her kids' elementary school, and the themes was going to be "Safari."    My nephews are in 3rd grade, and anyone who has been to an elementary school "dance" knows that there is a lot of running around and general chaos, and not much dancing.
      So, I got an idea, to make a display for the event that would really drive home the idea of the SAFARI theme as the kids (and parents) entered the school for the dance.   Of course, we know enough NOT to ask "permission" of any kind from the school first, after all they might very well say NO or start citing some irritating fire codes.......and everyone knows it is much better to beg for forgiveness later than ask for permission up front.  We wanted it to look like a Safari Hut type thing so we put bamboo over the doors......(Principal agreed it was better that we had not asked first LOL)

     Mary had the idea to borrow our Mom's Subaru and turn it into a Safari tour jeep for the evening.   We set up a folding table and a map, note the monkey who has escaped his net on the roof.   The zebra stripe was also cut from a plastic table cloth and taped on, much to Mom's dismay.  

       As for my contribution...I envisioned a display in which safari animals were all peeking out of jungle foliage, maybe including a sign of some kind.      I started planning out the animals and I got some foam core at Michael's.  
       I painted 4 animal heads; lion. tiger, giraffe and elephant and a sign.....I also picked up two rolls of kraft paper and some green spray paint, light green and dark green. In my spare time, while watching TV, I cut out leaves of various sizes and hoped they looked Jungle-ish......
On the night of the "dance", I started with a heap of empty cardboard cartons.    I stacked them up to about 6 feet and taped the heck out of them so they would be solid and stable.      Then I wrapped the whole heap using 2 dark green plastic tablecloths.   (Dollar Tree!)   I then placed my HEADS and used the paper leaves to cover the wrapped boxed to create my JUNGLE or as I came to call it, my SHRUB.   

That's me on the L and my other sister Ellen on the right,  she helped me put it all together!!!!

We were soooo witty, we put a safari hat on the giraffe and a parrot on the lion's head.   I got the parrots from the party store, they were just those puffy paper decoration-type things.

This is Mary, it was really her project and she did a great job,  the dance has been called the best one EVER in the history of dances at the Riley Ave school......

Mary, her kids and Assistant Principal Grimm.......

Principal Enos, Mary, and Mrs Grimm.  

Kids were actually dancing with their animal print visors on.

Oriental Trading.    Every kid got one.

Must have been a HIT since the principal did not want to throw it out, so it sits in the lobby of the school just outside the main office.    At least for now.....until the next dance theme comes along!!!!

THANK YOU Melinda for inviting me to be a GUEST BLOGGER!!!!!!

Schoolhouse Rock Illuminated Planets - NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART...

WARNING:  THIS CRAFT INVOLVES POINTY PIECES OF WIRE THAT WILL POKE INTO YOUR FINGERS, DROPS OF BOILING HOT GLUE, AND ENOUGH TIME AWAY FROM YOUR LIFE THAT YOU MAY FEEL LIKE RUMPLESTILTSKIN WAKING UP WHEN YOU'RE FINALLY DONE.  The possibilities, however, are really cool. 

Director:   I think we should do Schoolhouse Rock this year.

Me:  Oh, I remember those videos.  I loved them!

Director: I'd really like the planets to light up...  Can you do that?

Me:  Sure.  (I can't resist a crafting challenge...)

I really had no idea at first how I was going to do this, but when someone throws out a challenge like that I have to take it.  In the end, it worked out (thank Goodness!!)...  all 23 light strings worked, you could see the lights through the surface of the planets (I was worried the spray paint might block it out) and most importantly, no one batted anyone in the head with a planet by losing control of the pole it was mounted on...  awesome!

So if you're not faint of heart, you might want to make yourself some planets...  just for the heck of it.  Just remember to give youself LOOOOOTTTTSSSSSS of time. 

Here's what I used to make the basic shapes:

You need heavier gauge garden fencing, and some lighter gauge "poulty wire."  I used the one with the smaller holes - the holes were about 1 inch in diameter. 

I then cut strips of the heavier gauge wire to make a circle - the first part of the sphere for each planet.  I left some long pieces at each end so I could make loops to attach the ends together.

Next, I cut a shorter piece to round out each side.  If you cut the piece too short, you'll have a flat circle.  If you cut it too long, you'll have yourself a nice oval.  Good luck, this part was a pain in the ass.  Oops - did I just say that?

I just had to put this picture in here - see me bending the wire with my thumb?  take my advice and wear the leather gloves.  Your thumbs will thank you later.

No so bad, right? 

Next, you'll need to cover this wire ball with the smaller gauge chicken (or I think Home Depot calls it "poultry" wire)  This is the killer stuff.  It's much easier to bend, but when you cut it, the wire pokes out in all directions. 

Did I remind you yet to wear the gloves even though it's harder to work with them on than off?  Wear them. Wear them.  Wear them!

I don't have any pictures of this chicken wire stage because I was too busy poking myself with wire and patching myself up with bandaids to snap any pictures.It's not difficult - just cut a piece of chicken wire that looks as if it would cover about half of the planet.  Then wrap all the loose (pointy) ends around the nearest piece of heavier wire.  Don't forget to WEAR YOUR GLOVES!  If you are making planets on poles like I did, leave a hole at the bottom for the pole.

Oh wait, here's a picture of Saturn with chicken wire on it...

Oh, and I used gold, sparkley Christmas ribbon for the rings.  I glued it on to the wire you see here. And I wore my gloves.  by that time, I had smartened up. 

After the chicken wire, you're going to cover the planet yet again, this time with quilt batting.  I used quilt batting because I wanted something that was airy but yet with a little thickness to it so that you couldn't see the wires through the fabric.  The fluffiness of the batting diffuses the light.  Heat up your glue gun.  You can use a low temperature glue gun, but the fibers of the batting will stick to the gun, and piss you off royally, making a holy mess all over every surface within 3 feet.  Your spouse may comment that he hopes the blobs of glue come off the kitchen table.  They should, just wait for them to dry and chip them off with your fingernail.   So if you use a high temperature glue gun, get ready, you'll probably burn yourself with hot glue... unless you wear your gloves.

I tried a few methods with this - don't bother to sew a covering of fabric on it - takes WAY too long and it's no easier than just gluing batting on the wire directly.  This is how it worked best for me:  Cut a round piece of batting, big enough to cover about half of the planet.  Drap it over the top gently.  Don't drip hot glue onto the wire - most of it will just fall right through and land on the floor (does that glue come off carpeting?  Hopefully...) Instead, find the thick wire nearest to the edge of your piece of batting.  fold the batting back, and glue the underside of the batting in a line where you think it will touch the wire when you lay it down flat.  Wait a short minute for the glue to cool a bit and become more sticky and less lethally hot.  NOW, fold the batting down and stick it to the wire.  Works like a charm, but still wear your gloves anyway.  Overlap pieces of batting, but not by too much.  Your seems will add dimension to your planets, making them look like surface cracks and stuff.

Last, but not least SPRAY PAINT!  Spray paint lightly, and remember this is a prime opportunity to make URanus jokes.  The kids and I got a lot of mileage out of the name URanus.  "What color is Uranus?"  "I don't know, I've never seen it, but I imagine it should be green."  "IEWWWWW!!! hahaha!!"

To light your planets, wrap battery operated light strings around the closet poles you have already painted black (oh, did I foget to mention that? and yeah, closet poles are expensive).  make sure the switches are accessible from the bottom of the planet - on the pole.  Between the colored lights on the poles and the spray paint on the covering, you can get a whole host of colors for your planets.

Don't forget to attach them securely to the tops of the poles.  If you don't, you're sure to have one kid bounce around too much (as we did during rehearsal) and pop a hole right through Uranus with a pole.  Ouch.

This was my vantage point during the play.  When the kids took the planets ontstage, I heard the audience say "OOOOooooo" and start clapping, and you know, it was all worth it. 

Painting Faux Bricks

For when you absolutely, positively MUST have bricks, but let's face it, you're just not a mason...

there's always the FAUX brick option.  I had to paint this cube...

(remember my doorstop/table from last week?)

...and I didn't want it to look like the cubes from the last play, so I thought I'd paint some bricks on it. 

First, I got my lovely group of stage crew girls (I have a very small number of boys showing up, and they don't seem to like painting the way the girls do) to paint the whole cube grey. They did a great job - complete coverage and no paint on the floor.  They even washed the brushes and rollers until they were clean and able to be used again - already an improvement over last year!  The next day, during my lunch, I took the orignal grey and added some black for a darker version, and some white for a lighter version, and a dry bushed it on the whole thing here and there for accents.

Then stage crew met again, and I had another student tape a brick pattern with painter's tape over all the vertical sides.  Took her an hour and a half, the poor thing, but she stuck with it.  'ATTA GIRL!!

The next day at lunch, I rolled a brickish red over all of her taped areas.

Then I mixed some dark red (the same way I did with the grey) and dry brushed that on here and there...

 and then I did the same with some lighter red, (which looked suspiciously like pink...) and then let it all dry till this morning when one of my hard working stage crew girls took the tape off to reveal some decent looking faux bricks.

It looks a little bright in the picture, but I can't get hung up on that - it's done, and that's a good thing.  I only have about 800 more things to finish.  For some reason, when I thought of this covered in bricks, Sesame Street popped into my head (in the 70's you watched Sesame Street, and then switched to regular Saturday morning cartoons and Schoolhouse Rock when it came out - maybe that was the connection?).  Can't you picture Gordon or Maria doing a little dance on a cube like this one?

Schoolhouse Rock - Set sketch and plan

It's now less than a month until the play - I can't believe I still have so much to do!  I've been up at school with two out of the three stage crew groups so far. They've all been very helpful, but only only about half of the kids on each day's schedule are showing up...  and interestingly, it's only the girls that are showing up.  What's up with THAT?  Is it because Mr. C. isn't doing construction, and all the boys want to work with power tools? 
Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours up at school with three girls from stage crew, three older girls from the high school, and my own two kids.  Unlike Alice in Wonderland, where I had to build fabric mushrooms and make a bunch of props, this show involves mostly painting... but so MUCH painting.  I have to paint the desks (I'm showing 6 in the picture above, but I might use up to 8 of them)

and all those flats (the rectangles) that you see in the drawing as well.

As for props, so far I just have to make a large painting of a train engine, and a large painting of a ferry.  I found a picture of each online, photocopied them onto a overhead sheets, and we're now in the process of tracing the first one onto a 4x8' sheet of 1/4" plywood.    This is an easy task, but of course, none of the kids want to do it because it's tedious and exacting.  If you move the sheet of plywood before you're done tracing, your lines get all messed up.  Below is the sheet of plywood with the train half traced on it.  Unfortunately, you can't see all the lines.

I decided that we're going to paint the large cube with the step as if it were covered in bricks, so Monday at lunch, I'm setting up everything so that the big girls can work on it that afternoon.  I'll need to clear an area in the green room (which, unfortunately, doubles as a storage room for racks of folding chairs), lay out the drop cloth, put the cube on it, set up grey paint, rollers and brushes, and explicit directions for them so that they don't do something like forget to wash the paint brushes when they're done.  Then we can layer on the bricks on Tuesday, and accent them with more colors later on in the week.  I DON'T want my props looking flat this year.

Here's the large cube.  I'm currently using it as both a door stop and a table. 

Oh, wait, I also have to make the 10 planets.  Make that nine planets and the sun. Jeez, maybe I should should work on those tonight. 

Yikes!



Schoolhouse Rock - set design

Last year: Alice in Wonderland, this year:  Schoolhouse Rock.  Initially, I was excited to be designing the set for this play - I remember the Schoolhouse Rock videos from when I was a kid, and I still have a a few of those songs in my head.  I bought the DVD when I began teaching and I hummed a few bars of a couple of of the songs for my students when they popped into my head (most often, "... a noun is a person place or thing").  I thought I'd be making 9 paper mache planets (thank goodness THAT didn't pan out - TOO time consuming!) for the skit involving Interplanet Janet.

Once the school year started, however, and all sorts of other activities kicked into high gear, set design took a back burner.  Now February is looming, and I have just about one month to pull all this together, so here's my plan:

After creating last year's set, I learned a lot.  First, I must say, I LOVED how the mushrooms came out. They were a HUGE amount of work, however, and I'm not sure they were worth it, considering how far in the background most of them were.  A friend of mine lectured me on this as I was making them, and she was right.  Here's a picture:

Two things disappointed me with this set:  1.  Under the lights, everything looks so FLAT.  And 2. I was just not filling up that verticle space. With that in mind, when the director told me that Schoolhouse Rock is pretty much a one set play, I determined to figure out how to use that verticle space. 

The stage does have "fly space" the space above where you can see - by the lights all the way up to the ceiling.  It also has the necessary bar for hanging scenery the scenery on, however, there's one problem.  the bar is supposed to move up and down, and it doesn't.  The company that installed it, installed it as a stationary bar.  Oh well.

But for a one-set play, this is not a problem.  The set is supposed to be a classroom - the play is about a teacher on the morning of the first day of school, worrying about his first day.  The director thought, a bunch of chalk boards, and I think some chalk boards are cool, but not enough.  I thought a couple of LARGE, flat rectangles hanging from the ceiling could be like posters on the wall of the class.  The construction guy (a different one from last year's guy) agreed that this would not be a problem.  The one on the left is going to be a large map of the United States, and the one on the right (a long rectangle, hanging vertically) is going to be the American flag, with either the Pledge of Allegiance or the Preamble to the Constitution written underneath (there is a skit involving the Preamble - it's one of the songs I still have in my head after 30 or so years). My other, standing pieces will be a drawing of a person's circulatory system, some artfully drawn adjectives, and definitely a few "chalk boards" with things like "Do Now..." and maybe "Describe your Favorite Summer Vacation Memory" written on them. 

There are going to be some desks in the front, painted in crazy colors.  The custodial staff found some old ones in the basement that are not going to be used anymore, so we have permission to paint them. 

Other than those things my only major task is to create 9 planets (Pluto was still a planet back in the 70s) and a sun.  Create them so they are up in the air.  And they light up.  My plan is to make them out of wire, cover the wire shapes with fabric batting, spray paint the batting in appropriate colors...  and mount them on long poles.  Mounted to the pole inside each planet is going to be one or more strings of battery operated Christmas lights. 

I made a test one (although I didn't spray paint my test one) and they look AWESOME.  Now, I am just worrying that someone will accidentally bash a pole into something important.  Like someone else's head.  I bought poles that are long enough so they can sit on the floor - I thought they'd be easier to handle that way.

I have a lot of things to do, to put it bluntly.  I have about 26 kids who want to be on stage crew, though, so I'm trying to work it out so they can do most of the work. I'm splitting them up into 3 teams for construction, and based on the fact that I washed out a LOT of paintbrushes last year that I didn't use, I made a poster of stage crew rules. 

  
Tomorrow, I bring my supplies to work, and Tuesday, I start working with the kids.  I'll keep you posted.  Wish me luck!

Tiny Terror

We got a puppy last weekend, and she has already taken over everything.  Meet Zoey, the 12 pound terror.

Who, (with the exception of brand new parents), would think that something in the neighborhood of 10 pounds could so quickly turn your household upside down?  Not only is there a lot of paraphernalia; dog dishes, chewy toys, and things like "wee wee pads" (yuck - but they sure beat the heck out of plain old newspaper)  there are other things to consider as well...  Just because your alarm clock is set for 5:15 does not mean the puppy won't start missing her new human pack at say, 4:30 a.m.  and then what will you do? I mean, you could get a cage, but if you don't plan on using it for long, should you even bother?  If you don't get one, what will you use to corral your new furry child in to her safe location?  Safe, as in, safe for the puppy, and safe for your house...  Is there such a thing as a safe location in your house?  Will your puppy chew the corners of your kitchen cabinets?  Will those old child safety gates also work for a puppy?  By the way, when we trotted out the first safety gate, my son said he remembered being corralled in the den with it when he was little.  But guess what... higher intelligence is still trumped by the much greater spring in Zoey's hind legs - as of today she has vaulted herself over the top of the gate multiple times. 

She seemed so calm when I spotted her in her cage in the animal shelter - sleeping peacefully, all curled up in a ball...  I just knew she wouldn't be a barker, and she really is not.  But that doesn't mean she's not a jumper (maybe "vaulter" or more accurate).  Or a chewer. Does she chew her $8.00 dog toys?  Noooooo.... she'd rather chew an empty water bottle or the top of the battery operated pillar candle I got from Costco.  It no longer has a wick, and it's covered in chew marks.  

Will this be the motivator that finally gets everyone to put their shoes away all the time?  What good is a nice pair of shoes if the toes are all decorated with tiny teeth marks?

Still, she's so damn cute you just want to chase her around the house until she bites all your toes off...

...after she's practiced using her wee wee pads, of course.

From G-2 Pens to Nostalgia...

Today, I finally got a look at the infamous G-2 pens.  One of the sixth grade boys was in the hallway coming from the bathroom when the teacher on hall duty noticed all the pens in his pocket. 

"Hey, look at all those pens you have!" 

He proudly lifted the edge of his shirt so she could see the multi-colored beauties, all lined up like soldiers in his front pocket.

"Wow - that's quite a collection! Are those the G-2 pens I've been hearing so much about?"

"Yeah..."  you couldn't wipe the smile off his face if you tried, it was so huge.

"What's so special about those pens?"  she asked him.  "Why does everyone want them?"

How can one explain the love of an eleven year old boy? "Because they come in all different colors, and you can take them apart, and switch out the ink inside... they're really expensive" he added, "they're like a dollar each"  This, I find ironic, from a kid in an age where they think it's not unrealistic to want a new game system because they just came out with one decorated with Gears of War designs.  

"That's it?" she pressed.  "I know of lots of pens that come in all different colors - why are those so great?" 

Clearly willing to demonstrate a newfound favorite subject for her, the boy took one of his pens out of his pocket and kneeled down on the floor right there in the hallway.  He unscrewed the pen and removed its contents - an ink tube, a spring, a small colored plastic cork of sorts.  The hall duty teacher immediately began humming the theme from Mission Impossible, which is ironic, since that's what I used to humm in my head when I, bored in class, would take apart and reassemble my own pens way-back-when.  Does that make me a total nerd?  Does my use of the word "nerd" make me old? But I digress...  He reassembled the parts of his pen in a different order, then aimed the pen slightly up and out, and pressed the tiny pen-trigger, and launched the ink tube...

...a measely three feet, at best. 

"...and you can shoot em" he said, trying to sound casual, but clearly in awe.  Ah, the real reason for his fondness was suddenly, glaringly apparent.  "you know, if those were mine," I said, "I'd get the springs from TWO pens and find a way to put them together to make it shoot twice as far."  Clearly, sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut, however, I'm not sure my suggestion registered with him. 

Later, when I got home, I told my son about these pens.  He suggested we look it up on Youtube, which is his version of Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Well, lo and behold, 9 million videos on Pilot G-2 pens, and how to make them into missiles, etc.  We searched the house and found two perfect specimens already in our possession.  We followed the instructions and made our own poorly shooting pen-missiles. Of course, my son being my son, he immediately attempted the two-spring suggestion, but he said there's a ridge inside the pen that makes using two springs impossible. Oh well.  

All this got me thinking about what kids collected when I was that age... and I thought of those combs that everyone had sticking out of their back pockets - they came in a multitude of colors - I think all pastels. I think they were Goody brand - I do believe I even saw them in the store recently, although not in the vast array of colors they had back then.  They had rounded handles with a tiny hole in the center, and the teeth were rounded as well.  If you were really cool you had all the colors, and you chose a comb each morning that matched your outfit. 

For shooting things, there was the standard rubberband, sometimes shot alone, or loaded with folded papers, which my own kids call paper wasps.  I didn't know they had a name, but when you're hit with one, it stings like hell, so that name makes perfect sense.  As a kid my husband used unfolded paperclips in what he calls a "paperclip fight."  I threw paper clips, but I don't remember shooting unfolded ones with rubberbands - I heartily believed in the "you'll shoot someone's eye out" theory.  Of course, if I had shot paper clips with rubberbands, I might not admit to it now.

When I was in sixth grade we all collected these weird, stickers that came in gum (or maybe you just bought them outright?  I can't remember) ...they were parodies of famous products that were currently out on the market, like Heinz Ketchup.  The sticker would be an exact duplicate of a Heinz Ketchup bottle, but instead of Heinz Ketchup, it would be called something like HEINOUS Ketchup and it would have green chunks in it or some other gross thing.  What WERE those things called?

Ah, who can dictate the things that appeal to kids in each age?  Remember Silly Bandz? and that was only two years ago.  And so we come to the question:  will anyone remember the furor over G-2 pens in thirty years?