Fun with Felt and Dye at the ZACC!

Hey there to everyone who is following me on this journey!

I'm a little behind in my posting, last week was CRAZY! So...I'll be covering two weeks here. :)

Last week the ZACC hosted an afternoon summer camp called Fun with Felt and Dye with instructor and local artist Melissa Thompson. I just have to say...WOW! What a fun, super messy, get your hands in it kind of  project! The kids had a blast.
Melissa brought in a bunch of differently dyed wool for the kids to make felt out of. Their projects were to make felt balls and string for a necklace. And they also learned how to make flat felt pictures using different colors. It was so neat to see the different colors coming together, as no two kids chose the same.

Here are some photo's from this camp:

Here we have Riley with his choices of color for his felt "beads" that he's about to make. To make the beads the kids selected wads of wool, like Riley is holding and using a combination of soap and water a little bit at a time, gently rolled the wads in their hands until the wool compressed and eventually formed into a nice, hard ball/bead! It was a true practice in patience for most of the kids..."ughh...is mine done, yet!!!???" Haha...  Behind Riley is his sister, Keegan who is modeling a really cool pair of horns that Melissa made and brought to show the kids all of the options you have when working with felt! You can make anything!!

 

 Here is Melissa helping Angelina with her wool at the beginning of the project! She was so great with all the kids...and they were very inquisitive about the progress of their projects so placed a great demand on her expertise throughout this week and she was a wonderful teacher!!

 Here is another shot of Melissa in action with our large class and a wonderful pile of beautifully dyed wool just waiting to be worked by all the little hands!!

 

Last week we had several campers who were in both the morning and the afternoon ZACC camps, so in between the camps, I took the kiddo's down to the playground at the old Whittier School which is only a few blocks from the ZACC. So we pack up our box lunches and walk down to the playground, enjoy our lunch and PLAY!! It is the perfect place for these full day campers to get the wiggles out before their afternoon class!

I don't have pictures of the finished products yet...but I will get some and post them a little later, they turned out really well!