Happy 6th Birthday Miss M!!!

Yesterday there was a birthday party at the studio for a darling little six year old. Her mother told me she liked all things "girlie girl" and sparkle.

I suggested we make "Fairy Heads" inspired from a project I do in the fall with the students where we make Sugar Skulls.

The mother thought the girls would enjoy the project and so we were ready to go!

Let me just say this was the world's most calm birthday party I have ever held....even after they were fed the world's cutest Rainbow Birthday cake made by mom.

So it was very easy for me to work with the girls.

I gave them each some FIMO clay in white to sculpt their heads.  Working with the girls, we went over how to build a face.

And as with most projects, children began to add their own visions as they worked and what started off as fairy heads, quickly turned into a variety of interesting ideas.

Like the birthday girls' cat head.

birthday girl

Or her sister's alien!

Here are a couple of other views of her sister's alien. She was quite adamant that I take photos of all the details to share and who could blame her? She put great thought into her design.

Her oldest sister however created a darling fairy head.

While the FIMO was in the oven baking, the girls enjoyed cake and opened presents. Then they used markers and sharpie pens to color their sculptures. When they were happy with the color, I had crepe paper in the birthday girls' favorite colors to make flowers to put in the hair and rhinestones for a bit of glitz.

What I love the most is how different each girls' work is from each other. I love that after working out a project idea and putting out materials with an idea of the finished work in mind, children will always use those materials in the most unexpected ways when given liberty to add their own ideas to the parameters of a project. In the end, the work is always so much better than my original thought.

I had put out marker colors I thought would work to color hair, create eye color, and add a bit of blush to the cheeks or lipstick.

And some of the girls used them that way.

And others went off the beaten path and created green hair and why shouldn't a fairy have green hair? 

One girl created quite an elaborate head piece for her fairy, lots of flowers and rhinestone. This is the second set of pictures taken of the work because she thought she was done and had me photograph the work and then went back to the table and began adding more flowers and stones to her piece. And again, a bit of unexpected with pink eyes instead of traditional "human" color eyes.

I enjoyed working with this group of talented girls and I certainly hope they enjoyed the class. But most importantly, I truly hope Miss M had a very happy birthday and feel very privileged I was given the opportunity to be apart of it.

Happy Birthday Miss M!