Blue Glue Tie Dye

I'm back after a couple of months break for a move to South Africa. I just got Internet---setting these things up can be rather slow here and so now I am posting an update to a summer project with the kids.

Every summer at our church we have done tie dye with the children. This summer, I decided, rather than the usual tie dye to give my kids a chance to work with an easy, non-toxic resist befor dyeing. I first had my boys use a pencil to draw their ideas on the t-shirt. The photo above is from my 6 year old's design and as you can see it was based on the alphabet. I told him we can not make the lines too thin, so he came up with the idea of drawing 'bubble' letters. I helped him fill in the shapes with the glue but it is really not too hard for kids to do it themselves. I love the urban decay look he got from the brown and purple dye used. The photos below are from my eight year old's design. You can see he went for a two sided design.

If you decide to do a project like this you may need the following tips. No line should be smaller than 1/4 inch. In order to see the lines you will need to really make sure there is a lot of dye around the resist area. It is really hard to get blue glue out of jersey knit. I suggest following the usual means of setting your dye (we left ours in the sun for a day, rinsed with cold water, washed with other dyed clothes and then dried) and then set your resist area in a bowl, cover with very hot (read boiling) water and let sit. The very hot water will soften the glue and you can then scratch it off.

Mosiac with the Kids

I have mentioned in an earlier post the Takoma Park Mosiac project. I did not find that I could work on this project during the times available due to conflicting family schedules, however it did inspire me to do a mosaic project with my children. I have wanted to create a permanent piece of art for the house with my children for some time. My youngest son is very good with color and I thought a mosaic would be a great way for him to use this skill. My oldest son is very interested in birds and when I asked the children what the theme for the mosiac should be, they said bluebirds.
As a first step we went to Color Me Mine and each painted bluebird on a 4 x 4 in tile. We then ordered virteous glass seconds and colorfusion crystal glass tiles from Maryland Mosaics. In the first picture, the children and I have each placed our 4 x4 tile and then selected the colors of tiles to place around that tile on the wedi board backing. My four year old did the area on the left and 6 year old the area on the right. I did the midle area and the adheasive and spacing. Placing the tiles down was a pretty long process and so I did not include the children. My youngest did help with the grouting once the adheasive was cured.
The second photo is the completed mosaic project mounted as the backsplash behind our kitchen stove and shows my children and a neighbor. Great Job kids!