8 and 16-bit Love

So once again, I have to credit the4yablog.com for an amazing idea. I had seen in another one of their posts about making video game characters out of fuse beads. Exciting and totally rad! Well I was browsing some more and came across another post about making valentines out of those same beads. Great idea since I was probably going to have to order a ton of them anyways.


I ordered my kit from koolstuff4kids.com. I ordered the Classroom Kit II, which seems to be an ok starter kit. It comes with 6,000 mix color beads, several small clear pegboards, along with ironing sheets and an idea book. Be forewarned that the mix bag does have a somewhat limited palette of colors (bright yellow, goldenrod, light sky blue, dark sky blue, white, lime green, kelly green, black, tan, brown, pink, and red). It seems like an impressive list, but if you want to do really cool detail shading, it can be a bit stilting. That wasn't really an isuue for the hearts, but when we do video game characters next month, I can see it being a problem, so I'll have to order more colors.

I printed out some the examples they had on the blog, and let my teens have at it. The advantage of having the clear pegboards is that you can put pictures underneath to help with the design. Unfortunately, I don't think mine were sized correctly, so they had to count pixels or make up their own designs instead. The project will go a lot faster if the colors are presorted, but if they're not, get them to help you with that - or just don't bother - hey, it takes up more time.

They really seemed to like this one. We used the finished product to make magnets or keychains (as seen above). I haven't done this with my teen boys yet, so I may be updating if they don't really like it. However, I've been pretty spot on with my projects (or they're just really nice and humor me).

Cube Art

This was the first program I did for 2010! I'm finally caught up! I would love to say that I'm clever, and I came up with this all on my own, but alas, I am not. My saving grace for this semester is this blog that I stumbled across. This blog has some of the coolest, hippest, most awesome ideas for teen programming that I've come across in awhile.

One that caught my eye (and is super easy), is the link to these cube characters. Cubeecraft has a couple of hundred of designs to choose from. You just click on the one you want, save the pic (or download it - the 2 page characters are in .zip files), print them out, color (if you have a b&w printer like I do), cut and assemble. They are truly self-explanatory, so I can't really give you anymore instruction than that. They've got movie, cartoon, and video game characters. All of my teens loved this - especially my geeky gamer boys. They snatched up 5, and begged to take some home. This is a great, cheap, easy program for anyone to do!

(In case you're wondering - that's [from L to R] Jack Skellington, Rorschach, and the 1-up Mushroom from the Mario games.)

Budding Artists

This wasn't really a program I did specifically for teen and tweens (it was ages 8 and up - I set my tweens at 10), but I still think it warrants at the very least one post.

Budding Artists was a program we've done for two summers now, and it's a concentrated craft program. Most of the crafts we do with our storytimes are short, little 5 minute things that probably get trashed as soon as they get home. This program was a craft that took an hour long, and was hopefully nice enough to stick around a little longer than the 5 minute.

When we originally did this program, the age was set for 5. Really, really bad idea. The 5 year olds just didn't have the attention span for it, and they had to have their parents there helping, which took up space and made it so less kids could attend. So we set the bar higher to 8 (and still had issues with 5 year olds coming in), and things were a little better this year.

We started out simple. I made a Pointillism coloring sheet. Using Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte”, I made a black and white outline. I showed the kids a picture of the original painting, explained what pointillism is, and let them at it with markers. If they wanted to do their own design, they could flip the sheet over and do it there.

We then moved onto collage. Most of them had probably already done one at some point in time, but I did explain that the pictures could all be the same theme, or same color, or have absolutely nothing to do with the other. They definitely enjoyed this one because it's a little more interactive than the coloring sheet.

I believe the next project we did were the stained glass bottles, but because that was already discussed in the last post, I won't write about that again here. The next thing we moved onto after that was Pop art. This ended up being a two week program. I decided to do a giant paper-maiche pencil. I made a framework out of carpenter's cloth, and the kids did the paper-maiche over it. Because of the time needed for that to dry, we had to wait to paint it til the next week. I knew we wouldn't have the room for all of them to paint the pencil at once, so I made up some pop art coloring sheets. I had been taking pictures of the kids that had been participating, but since attendance fluctuated so much, I couldn't have pictures of everyone on hand, so I made sure I had pictures of Campbell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe printed out as well. The kids really enjoyed working on the giant pencil and were making plans on us doing a whole line of oversized school supplies.

The final thing we did last summer were masks. I wanted to do something that incorporated one of the other creative arts, and this was perfect. We put up a sign in our staff area asking for donations of notions, and I bought some ribbons and things to supplement. We have a mask die-cut from Accucut, and get mat board donations from a neighborhood framer. All I had to do is put the supplies on the table and let them go to town. It was difficult getting some kids to stop adding things on and get them to leave, but they obviously had a good time.

You may be saying to yourself, "But what about that dreamcatcher over to the side there?" That was from our Budding Artists program last summer. I really liked this project, but it was a difficult one to master. For our younger ones (this was when we still had 5 yr olds), I punched holes in the mat board so they could just thread the jute through anyways they liked. The older ones I encouraged to do the proper way, but they still had problems with it. If there had been someone else who could do the weaving as well as I could, and help the kids, it probably would've been better. The dreamcatchers were made with mat board, jute, foam feathers, and plastic pony beads. If I were to do this craft again, I would get sinew, some green twigs, suede, etc - more natural materials to use.

Fake Stained Glass Bottles

You've probably all done this craft at some point in time. You take pieces of tissue paper, a bit of glue, and decoupage the paper onto a jar, bottle, or glass to make it look like stained glass. Easy, right? Anyone can do it. Well I came up with a way to take it to the next level.

The same basic principle is the same, but to make it look more like stained glass, I took some black construction paper, cut out designs, and decoupaged it on. Now I took the hard road when I did it. I put the tissue paper down first, arranging the colors pretty close to the design I wanted. I then drew out my design on the construction paper (eyeballing my tissue already down to get the placement right), and then cut it out and glued it on. This is definitely not recommended for anyone lacking spatial ability and hand-eye coordination.

The much easier method would be to do your design ahead of time and cut it out, so you can use it as a guide when you’re gluing the tissue paper down. Once all the tissue paper is decoupaged, then you can lay you’re design on top and glue it down. Make sure you do several layers of the mod podge (or watered down glue) to ensure your tissue is good and stuck, and your black design won’t just peel up. As you can see, the designs won't line up perfectly, and some of the colors will come outside the lines, but I actually like the look of it - kinda gives it that 50's/60s design charm.

This was a craft that the teens certainly enjoyed, but it is very hard to do if you have time constraints. I only had an hour to do this craft with them, and it was a little hard to get everything done. Quite a few shied away from doing the black paper design, but maybe if we had done this project over the course of two weeks, more of them would've been willing to do it.

Cake Decorating

We were planning for our summer kickoff carnival, when we got the brilliant idea to do cake decorating. For our kids' carnival we read "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" and let the children decorate cupcakes. Then we said "Why should the little kids get all the fun?”

My hope was that I could get one of the people from “Ace of Cakes” to come and do a demo, but I had no such luck. It’s ok – I understand they’re busy people. *sigh* It was then that I had to figure out a plan b, so I turned to Publix. I had been told in the past that they donate supplies to places, so I called the bakery to see what I could work out. They told me I needed to write a letter to corporate and get the donation of supplies approved, and then we could talk about getting a decorator to come and do a demonstration for my teens.

I wrote a letter and faxed it ASAP, and within a week I got a $100 gift card! Score! I called the bakery back, but didn’t get a response. Not a problem. I got the supplies (and 6 hours of baking and making of icing later), and decided to do the program myself. A couple of days before the program, the Publix bakery finally called me back, and agreed to have a decorator come out. She did a demo, showing the teens different techniques, and icing a couple of cakes (both of which we got to keep – awesome!).

While the demo was going, my coworkers and I set up the supplies. I baked a bunch of 13” x 9” cakes and quartered them, and made I don’t know how many batches of buttercream. We used the Wilton recipe, but with so many hands handling it for so long, I’m not sure it was the best idea. The icing got really runny after awhile. Maybe if we had had ice to rest it on when it wasn’t being used things would’ve fared better. Live and learn. The teens had a blast (even the guys), and it is definitely a program I will do again sometime.

Plaster Casts

So I'm having to backtrack a bit because I forgot to write about the programs with did with our teens this summer. Because the theme was "Be Creative", we tried to hit 3 main bases of categories - music, art, and drama. Since my degree is in art, that's always going to be the easiest one for me to do.

Our first program was plaster casts/mold of hands and faces. I forget which company we ordered them from, but we got the plaster sheets in rolls. They're super easy to use. You just have to cut off the length you want, wet it, apply it to what you're molding, and let it dry. This is a very messy craft - so watch out.

We just did hands and faces, but you could do feet too. Make sure you have plenty of baby oil and vaseline. The vaseline is a little harder to get off your skin, but I think it makes it easier for the cast to come off. The hands were really easy to do (though the teens generally had to work in pairs to get it done). The masks were a little tougher because of eyebrows and other hair that can get caught in the plaster and pull. (Make sure you have tough teens that want their faces done - no whiners). The more you layer the plaster, the thicker the cast will be, and the better it will hold up when you're pulling it off your teens.

Make sure you have baby wipes on hand to help get the oil and vaseline off. If you're bathroom is on the other side of the library, a tub with some washcloths and warm water would be a good idea too. The teens really liked this one, but if you have more than a handful of kids, make sure you have some volunteers or parents who are brave (and competent) enough to help you out.

Henna and Temporary Tattoos

I’ve done henna tattoos on myself for years, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since I started doing teen programs. My original idea was to do something on the culture of India, and have that as part of it. As it was, I ended up doing a program with temporary tattoos. I bought some face paint at Walmart (which was actually pretty good), but they only had one kit, and I had some pre-made henna in a tube at home, so I brought it along just in case.

I had warned some of the kids about it ahead of time and asked their parents – just to make sure it was ok. Henna can last several weeks, though I read somewhere recently if you use something that has alpha hydroxy acid in it (like sunscreen) on the area you tattooed, then it breaks the dyes down, and washes off more easily.

The teens had a lot of fun with this program, though I ended up

doing most of the work. They were more than welcome to use the face/body paint that I had bought, but few did. They all wanted the henna done, and because it lasts so long, I was the only person I wanted doing it. Besides, there was only one tube.

This is a great opportunity for your teens to get creative (provided that you have enough face paint to go around). I got out books that they could look through, and they really enjoyed looking at and learning about the henna tattoos and the traditions behind them. Since it was a popular program, I think maybe I will do my idea of a program on the culture of India - I'm sure they'll enjoy it.