Michigan Makers at Scarlett, Fall 2017, Meeting #3: Photo-editing/Monster pillows

Bracelets, buttons, monsters, and spooky editing! This was a jam-packed session. Today ended up being a girl-only day with a handful of girls coming back to Michigan Makers. We had a couple different crafts going on; all relatively simple and fun. There was the option to use stamps to decorate bookmarks or bracelets, make custom buttons with a button maker, use photo software to take photos of the school and edit them, and monster pillows were back.

We will start with a small oops. We were all ready to go with the button maker and were pretty excited too. Using a circle punch, students cut out images from magazines that they found fun or pretty to turn into buttons. The buildup was tense and the excitement was palatable. Then the worst thing happened. The button machine was not working. It had gotten banged a bit in transport. We were worried we had broken it. No tutorial or information manual was capable of fixing the button maker in the moment. It was a bit of a let down, but we did have a bunch of other activities with us. It was time to let go of the buttons for today.

For the physical crafts we had two options. We could create more monster pillows. Which is fast becoming a favorite of the group. Or you could make bracelets and bookmarks by stamping letter strips with a variety of stamps and inks. While I did not manage to get pictures of the finished bracelets I can tell you they were a smorgasbord of colors and images. One had a very strong pineapple theme to it. Too go along with the pineapple bracelet there was a pineapple monster pillow. As well as a cat and an owl monster pillow. Sewing skills are improving. Students are getting a better grasp of the whip stitch and are also having a blast creating their own sewing patterns to make new unique shapes.

The digital item of the day was photo editing. The idea was to take a photo of the school or something in the library and edit the photo to see what you can do with it. One student took a photo through the window of the building façade and with the help of Picmonkey she was able to make quite a chilling and spooky black and white Halloween inspired photo. I definitely would not want to go to the school she created in that photo.

All in all the session was filled with exciting things to try both in physical and digital media. I do also have good news to report. A few days after the session we were able to fix the button maker. Apparently a small magnet had found its way into the machine and it was just enough to prevent it from working properly. We look forward to bringing the button maker back finally turning our small circle punched pictures into buttons to wear with pride.