Stencil Prints

STENCIL PRINTS

Long gone are the days when we could allow the children to experience screen printing.  Lack of space, lack of time, lack of sinks and of course lack of finances.  All too familiar for many of us?  Stencil prints provide a really great alternative.   I doubted the childrens' ability to cut tricky stencils without craft knives too, but they always rise to the occasion!    

This was a 3 class project, 7 and 8 year olds, the first class printed the first flowers on the fabric, the next class added the centres and the third class used little highlights of red inks to print little flowers and bubble wrap dots.    Think I may make curtains! 

Keeping my bird obsession alive this class made "wee birds".  Three colour prints, in 1 1/2 hours.  No way would we have been able to achieve that using screens.  

My primary Southmuir Primary 7's made Mother's Day prints

Sometimes its nice to fit in with a class project, so these pupils used a WWII theme for their prints.  Some challenging cutting with scissors involved with the dark layer! 

This class used a stencilled tree to display their "wee birds".

The children had great fun adding pretentious titles to their prints, and marking them A/P.  

Yarn Bombing - Eassie Style

A big box of wool, 4 old canvases, some old pizza boxes, and an unseasonal sunny day were the inspirations for this project.  At Eassie Primary all the children get involved, all 19 of them!

We wrapped little pieces of  pizza box cardboard (easy to cut and strong) with either Hot or Cool colours of  wool and arranged them on to our canvases.  We even had time to try our hands at Pom Pom making, quite a challenge for the 5 year olds, but not impossible.

Some of the Pom Poms never made it to the spherical stage but were added on to the collage.

 
 The weather was so good we decided to go out and "Yarn Bomb" the playground!  I even get paid for this!

“To See Oursels As Ithers See Us”

In Scotland at this time of year our thoughts turn to Rabbie Burns. Its a great way to shake off the winter blues.  Haggis, whisky and poetry!

Recently I took one of the lines of a Burns poem to form an exhibition of dry point etchings called

“To see oursels as ithers see us” 

It's a line from "To A Louse" and describes how Burns witnesses with horror as a beastie has the audacity to crawl amongst the lace collar of a particularly upper crust lady as she sat infront of him in church.  He comes to the conclusion that we are all born equal, and it would perhaps be an advantage to view ourselves through someone else's eyes. 

 Nearly 300 children took part from 2 of my schools, all the 8 - 12 year olds.  were given a small piece of perspex and a photograph of themselves and scratched their own image, with a sharp point.

The children then inked the plates (and their hands and the tables and their faces!) and armed with a tiny portable borrowed printing press and a ton of beautiful hand made paper we set to printing 300 of the little faces, pinning them on to large sheets of polystyrene, for display 

  

Friends who have a photographic studio (Hamilton Kerr, Kirriemuir, check them out!) kindly lent us the space to hang the work for a week, and we sold  the pieces to delighted parents.  True to form we had the most dreadful snow storm in Kirriemuir on the opening night (Burns Birthday), but still children and parents braved the snow drifts and joined us for the evening.  

We even had our local poet,  Mark Thomson, drop in to see "Whit the craic wis"

So proud of my pupils, quite an achievement, and hopefully they will see themselves as others see them.

THE CORBIE

It's that time of year in Scottish schools.  Heading towards Burn's Day, a lot of the children are learning Scots poems.  Once learned never forgotten.

These lessons are based on a Scots poem that I learned at school called "The Corbie".

A corbie sits at the tap o’ thon tree,

And he’s lookin  doon wi his black black ee,

And hes crying oot wi a “Caw Caw Caw”

“If you try to sclimb up, You are sure tae fa”

My father says it'll no be lang, 

Afore I’m  big an supple and strang 

An' i'll sclimb up an I'll no fall, 

An' we'll see if the Corbie cries Caw! Caw! Caw!

My mither says its a daft-like ploy

But my faither could dae it when he wis a boy! 

A Corbie is a crow!   

What a great excuse to get the messy charcoal out (to the horror of the class teachers). Can you believe the children are only 5!