THE BIG REVEAL - PART ONE

EARTH LOOM

ADVANCED 3-D ART

reclaimed wood, drill, hammer, sanding equipment, nails, dowels, 

wood glue, brackets, wood burning tool & acrylic paint 

Ever since school started this year,

I've been so excited to show you what my babies,

seniors Shreya Sheth & Jacqueline Yu have been creating.

A community Earth Loom.

I saw the idea this summer on Pinterest

 and shared it with the girls to see if they might be interested in trying to pull this off.

They were super enthusiastic about it because last year in the Intermediate class 

they loved the Weaving Unit on the frame Looms.

So starting with the first week of school 

they researched and drew out designs,

and found pieces of old wood that I'd dumpster dived for that they thought might work.

Second week of school they started construction.

I brought in my husband's table circular saw and off they went.

Shreya above with a satisfied smile on her face,

Jac below holding her breath and wishing for the best.

ha ha

Both girls learned how to use this saw in their first year of 3-D art when we made the Wood Angles.

Next was sanding the wood pieces.

They started off using sandpaper and doing it by hand.

Nope,

that was way too time consuming and would have taken them half the year.

So I brought in the hubby's electric sander and off they went again.

Here's Jac below taking a photo while I'm taking a pix of the two of them.

Jac just looked too adorable in this neckerchief. 

Next they decided to stain the wood with acrylic paint, 

something that we had tons of thanks to Alumni Anne & Emily Allen's mother

and her generous donation.

The nailing and gluing together was next,

but the wood was hard for these little cuties to go thru

so they pre-drilled many of the holes.

I love this picture of Shreya up on the table sitting in the middle of the loom with drill in hand.

One of the things I was most impressed with during this whole process 

was the fact that these two worked so well together.

Every move they made was discussed first then they did each step together.

Talk about teamwork!

I sent the kids to Home Depot with $40 to buy casters 

so went could roll the loom in and out the door.

That's what Jac is working on here.

While at Home Depot 

they also asked for help with how to strengthen the pieces of wood they glued together

 to add height to the loom.

They came back with these metal brackets above with spikes that they nailed over the joins.

Plus they brought me back change!

Yes!

 Oh, oh, oh,

and one last touch.

The girls wood burned their names onto the feet of their loom.

Pefect!

Before these dolls rolled the loom outside 

which we will see in Part two,

I added a neckpiece I had made in the 1980's for good luck.

The necklace has a special feather from the duck my son used to feed 

at my mother's mobile home park she lived in when he was a baby.

And then the girls found another feather to add as well

and bound the whole thing onto the top mid part of the loom.

This whole shebang took these little ones only 17 days 

and I'm so proud to have been able to show off their process.

I look forward to showing you Part Two so you can see what happened next.