Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Art Table(and yogurt cup recycling)...


Art isn't confined to the art table in our house.But it's very nice to have the supplies together in one place at least.It's the springboard ,if you will,for many projects.The only things I don't have here are the paint collection(surrounded by carpet,the table is) and paintbrushes and our collections of "recycle stuff" also known as trash in many households such as cereal boxes , oatmeal cans, an old stuffed animal to reuse the stuffing from-you get the picture. Closets have some strange contents around here.But can anyone relate to the frustration of wanting to do a craft and finding that one has at least one item missing from just about every project in the book?
Anyway,I buy packs of copy paper for our paper supply and keep a wide plastic bin under the table for all those finished pieces the children so often want to save.It works fabulously.
Recently I was at a yard sale where the seller told us we could fill a bag for a dollar from a box of assorted McD toys(I know,I detest them too,my sons have an attraction) and other little things.In the box were packs and packs of brand new Staples 2 hb pencils.Check off pencils as a want for art table
Prismacolor pencils. I picked up some Verithins when Michaels had a 50 percent off coupon I believe.Recently I used a 40 percent off coupon on one of their regular Prismacolors which they sell individually or by the tin. These pencils are super expensive but oh,so worth it!
We were given and found a lot of markers of all types which I organized into tall yogurt containers which I painted with acrylic paints.You can get little bottles of acrylic paint at Wal-Mart for around50 cents. Black covers the lettering on the cups really well and looks rather elegant but other colors are fine too.Maybe don't cover as well.So these containers hold lots of art supplies in an easily "seeable" and accessable fashion.
Crayons-we don't have a fancy storage system for these.Just a crayon box for these.The Crayola Twistables I believe are absolutely wonderful in the non-breaking department as long as your little one doesn't twist the tip out too far.
Popsicle or craft sticks and Tacky glue plus boys equals lots of fun!
Scotch tape-keep plenty around.It's usually worth it to invest in fairly good quality as it tears off much easier so they don't end up with a wasted strip of twisted tape that wouldn't come off the roll easily as the cheapo ones tend to do. Badly written,I know.
And for 50 cents I found something I really wanted to play with myself too.Staedtler watercolor pencils. The watercolors pencils I've seen advertised are usually pricey so I was delighted to find an almost full tin of these in a box at a yard sale recently. Now that I've tried them I can see how they would be worth shelling some pennies out for!
Well,I could probably rattle on but I have hungry small people waiting for a pot of oatmeal.
Until later,Marcella

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