Secret Project Reveal!

​Lord knows I love a secret art project, and this one took a while but I made it happen!  ​

I know that you have probably seen some of these 'teacher wears dress made of student art' articles on the interwebs, and so have I, but every time I see them I have three thoughts;

Thought 1: Cool!
(followed by, "I bet the kids LOVE it!")

Thought 2:  I am pretty sure my art sister, Cassie Stephens was one of the first, if not the first, to do this. 

(If you don't know who she is, she's kinda the elementary art teacher that every art teachers wishes that they had as a kids, total rock star and definitely a forced to be reckoned with.  She was our FAEA keynote speaker this past October, click here to read my blog post!)

This gal is so stinkin' fab!

Thought 3: I would love to make a version of that- but one that fits my style more....like...as in it's gotta be black or in ain't happening. 

​(I joke that if I even think about wearing white the garment gets a stain...but it's not a joke)

So I started working on this top secret project.

I decided that instead of using student artwork, that I would use my graduating seniors signatures.  I found a dress on sale, a black faux wrap dress that is all me and took it to school.  Two challenges I faced right away were that I wanted to keep it secret- and also I was running out of time since the seniors were finishing up early.  To handle the first challenge I wrapped the dress around a box and taped it down, leaving only a section at a time open for my students to 'autograph' with puff paint.  I would take it off and reposition it every few days to try and get the signatures on different areas, but also to control where the writing was going on the dress.  I didn't want them to know what it was, they thought it was a t-shirt- I just let them think that.  Challenge two was time- I did my best to get all the seniors to sign it, but it was pretty tough with testing and some of them bring exempt from exams.

I brought the piece home and laid it out with some cardboard under it to 'connect' the signatures with the puff paint and add some additional designs, planning for the design to be asymmetrical to mimic the diagonal of the 'faux wrap'.  Then I bagged up my dress form to protect it, watered down some acrylic paint, put the dress on the dress form and took it outside to spray with layers of paint in teal, purple and blue.  I repeated this process a few times until the design was filled in the way that I wanted.

I think I did a pretty good job making my own version of Cassie's 'kid's art dress';

Inspired by Cassie- hope I did ya proud, sis!

Oh wait- ya'll know I had to ACCESSORIZE this look, right?
I decided it was the perfect time to wear the bag that
my student Tahisha hand painted for me!

After THAT...nothin' left to do but watch these kids GRADUATE! 
I love you class of 2019!