Jim Dine Decorated (paper) Sugar Cookies

Jim Dine was our inspiration for these freshly baked "paper" sugar cookies! I found a bunch of aging manilla paper and cut it in half to form a 6x12 pieces and had seen an art lesson like this on Artsonia a while back. We discussed and looked at heart art by Jim Dine. For this lesson I really wanted to keep the creativity open so I simply gave them the criteria and order of supplies to be used and brainstormed with them.

First students traced hearts (4, 2 on each sheet of 6x12. This cut down on time and frustration of trying to fit 4 hearts on a 12x12) with pencil. Then cut out. This is the sugar cookie dough!

Meanwhile, paint with either pink or red on the ribbed outside edge of the plate. That's the only part that will show because of the lace doily and cookies overlaping on top. While the paint is drying. I tell students to trace their sugar cookie heart on the colored 'icing' or colored construction paper. I had lots of different pinks and red out of cut construction paper. Then fold in half to trim the outter edge all the way around to make it smaller so when you glue it on, you'll still see the sugar cookie edge. I told students to think about adding sprinkles and pattern by drawing it on or coloring it in with oil pastels.



some students came up with the creative concept to make it look more like
a true cookie by making it look like a bite was taken out of it



After icing and detail is added, I told students to glue the hearts to the doily incase your plate with paint on it is still drying. If ready and slightly wet, you can still glue on the doily, just be careful. Then, for the best for last. I had out white shiny Tulip fabric paint with some red glitter, pink glitter, and silver glitter fabric paints. I said it gives it the detail and effect of piped frosting! Neato. Oh and it gets better. I had a 'crystal sugar' (clear crystal glitter, not real sugar) station that you can sprinkle on if desired for the crystal sugar effect and it sticks to the fabric paint. The key is to keeping the small container of glitter in a box, putting the plate in the box, sprinkling the glitter, shaking it and then removing it. This conserves the glitter and the mess. It's easy to take the leftover glitter in the box and pour it back in the glitter container to be used again, and there's no real big mess everywhere either for our custodian!

supply table



student work. Look a heart arrow and glitter piped frosting!



good enough to eat!

"I MUSTACHE you a question...Will you be my Valentine?"

 Kindergarten is going to be making Mustache Valentines! All I did was make some mustache tracers to trace onto brown paper pieces with white crayon so they can see and cut.  They can pick one glittery heart to glue on somewhere. I wrote their names on popcicle sticks then had out a bunch of masking tape pieces around my table. Tape the stick to the side. I made copies of the saying "I MUSTACHE you a question...WIll you be my Valentine?" Gluing the saying on is the last step! Easy and fun and sure to get some laughs.

SECRET Painter's Palette Valentine

So I forgot to show you what I did with 1st & 2nd grade for Valentine's Day! We made..shhhh...SECRET Valentines!  I have weird Eureaka moments ever so often. Like, how can encorporate new art materials....say watercolor pencils into a new lesson? I like a challenge. First we traced palette templates on white cardstock, then cut it out. Then using tiny heart templates used WATERCOLOR PENCILS to trace inside and then color in! Viola!

Then using a white oil pastel or white crayon, write a secret message! Make it fun! I wrote some basic messages on the board but you could write "You're a work of Heart!" or "I love you with my whole ART!" to give it a unique, fun, spin! Then I had students come up with a red or pink Q-tip and using a hot glue gun, made a tiny dot of glue to secure a "paintbrush" or Q-tip to the Valentine. They then can write on the back to and from  XXX and OOO's. I explained that you could give it to someone you know and tell them to dip their 'paintbrush' into water and then use the "paint hearts" to get paint on the brush and spread it over the secret message.  I had my students make 2. 1 for themselves so they could reveal the secret message and 1 to a friend or family member to have them reveal it with them! They were amazed that watercolor pencils really turn into watercolor paint!



Heart Trees

Kindergarten is making these really neat trees along with a few other classes. We simply had different paint stations at different tables. Light baby pink, medium pink, and red paint with big chubby brushes. First we got a white sheet of paper, used a brown marker to make the trunk, traced around the heart template, then went from table to table tabbing on the dots of paint of that color (I encourage light color-dark color) to fill in the heart. Before putting the painting away in the drying rack to dry, we sprinkled on some pink glitter. I also talked about Jim Dine has a lot of heart-themed art and referred to my bulliten board and how I like to tie it into the month of February.