Scenes from Jewelry-Making Artist's Workshop

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of hanging out and creating jewelry with a few lovely students at Amherst Middle School. We learned some basics of jewelry design and construction and students were able to go home with duct tape earrings, beaded earrings, a glass bead bracelet, and a shrink art necklace. While they were creating, they were learning how to use jewelry-making tools and jewelry findings.

While these pieces are easy to make, they form the foundation of basic jewelry-making skills students can use to make a number of fabulous pieces! Hopefully they are inspired to create some lovely pieces at home!

And here's the link to the tutorial we used as inspiration for our duct tape earrings--I'm now sporting a pair of rainbow tie-dyed feather earrings my son made me! :-) *LOVE*

http://www.brit.co/flirty-fluorescent-feathers-another-win-for-duct-tape/

American Masters Shrink Art Bracelet

I am SO thrilled with this project! I have been trying to think of some ways to create a project where children could create a series of mini masterpieces after famous artists and then put them all together as one project at the end. My take on this: the Mini Masters Shrink Art Bracelet! A great project for a survey of art history! You could focus on whatever type of art history you'd like, or create a series of panels focusing on one artist.

In this project, I took 1 1/2" x 1 3/4" pieces of shrink art film (plastic) and created a series of mini masterpieces patterned after famous American artists. I had originally created WAY too many, but the final bracelet has 8 panels to fit my wrist. This is a lovely way to introduce students to basic jewelry making skills as well.

These are the tiles after shrinking, but before I linked them with the jump rings.
Can you name all of the artists? The first one is tricky since it is so dark,
it's a heart like Jim Dine...

The finished bracelet, all linked together. Some of the panels (above)
didn't make it since I only needed 8 for my wrist.

I'll be making a version of these with my Middle School students after school on February 8th. I'll post detailed instructions and their versions after that.

Enjoy!