Category: Studio News

Mothers’ Day is coming soon. You would like to do something special for Mom, Grandma or another special lady in your life. Flowers and chocolate are nice, but you’d like to shake things up a little. What would be fun and special and unique…?

A full-on scrapbook is a long endeavour. Maybe you don’t have that much time on your hands. How about something in the same vein, but smaller and… well, cooler?

Meet the Explosion Album, the creative combination of scrapbooking and origami! Three big squares of heavy paper get folded in a particular way. When you fold them together, you get a neat little square booklet-type of bundle. But when you unfold it, it reveals all kinds of secrets and a much bigger surface to work on that appears at first!

What makes an Explosion Album so much fun, is all the little surprises and secrets you can hide in it.

In the video I shared with you, you can see an album I’ve made about my nephew Vincent. There’s decoupaged shapes of his kitty, Chucky. There are pockets where I hid pictures transformed into cute bookmarks. There are mini-booklets that are bound with an eyelet so you can twist them open.

That is what makes an explosion album such a fun craft to realize and a really special present to offer. It seems to keep on giving as you explore it! You can make it as simple or as intricate as you’d like. You can make one that is your own little secret pocket to hide precious keepsakes. Once you know how to make one, it kinda becomes addictive! You always want to create another one!

So, what type of material is necessary to make your own explosion album?

You start with three large squares of heavy craft paper – this is important so it can survive multiple folding and unfolding. I used three sheets of 12×12 heavy scrapbook paper. You will also need two 6×6 squares of slightly heavier cardboard – you can cut them from an old cereal box.

From there, whatever you have under hand can be used to embellish and personalize your album: wrapping paper, strings and ribbons, stickers and stamps, pictures, buttons, drawings and doodles, etc. Let your imagination run wild!

For Mothers’ Day, you can include a little secret envelope where you can hide wishes from your heart, a little poem, or just a few words to tell the person you’re making it for how much you love her.

Check out our upcoming events for the chance to come and try your hand at one of these marvelous little treasures…? See you soon!

Our next Curious Kids session starts in just two weeks! Every session I try and include fan favourites, new classes, and old classes we haven’t done in awhile. Lego is our most popular class so of course that class will be available both in our Jarvis Studio and Simcoe Studio. Mixed Bag will be making its return! A class that is something different every class such as: arts, crafts, playdoh, lego, music, drama, games, and so much more. It’s a great class for kids that aren’t too sure what they like or like having a variety of fun! This session we will be bringing Mixed Bag to Jarvis and Simcoe! I also would like to try out a new class, Disney Night! A fun fact about me, I had the opportunity to work in Disney World down in Florida. Disney is something I hold close to my heart and would love to share my love for it. Disney based games, trivia, pin trading, movies, shows, colouring, Star Wars, Marvel, just everything Disney! This new session will be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get started on it! 

-Travis

Here, at Lupton Street Studios, when we do a painting session, whether with kids or adults, we always start with the same five colours.

Yellow, blue and red, as you probably know, are the primary colours. Black and white are not considered colours but they allow us to create all kinds of variations in our palette.

Why only these five hues? Well, I myself as a painter discovered two universal truths about colour…

The first one was that if I wanted to own a tube of every colour that exists, it would cost me horrible amounts of money. It would also take way too much space in my craft room. I mean, I love shopping at my local Arts and Crafts store. But there’s a limit to the amount of dollars I’m able to shell out on that yummy bran new shade of blue…

This hard truth led me to the second discovery. I decided that if I wasn’t gonna buy every different colour available, I had to try and recreate them. I poured some of my trusted basic primary colours unto a plate, and started trying all kinds of mixes and combinations.

Cue the music of angels singing in heaven as a ray of light shines down on my head: a portal of creative expression opened wide in front of my eyes. I was mixing all kinds of pinks, purples or greens, some light, some dark, some very bright and peppy, some subdued and delicate… There was simply no limit to what you could come up with.

This is why I rarely give pre-mixed colours in my painting events. I like to give a chance to every participant to discover that it does not matter if you don’t come up with the exact same shade of blue as me. What matters is that you discover that YOU are in control, and you can create the mix that pleases you the most!

Check this video to get just a glimpse of the adventure of mixing colours. You will also discover that terms we tend to use interchangeably like hue, tint, shade or tone, actually have very different meanings! Have you ever explored colours in this way? I’m challenging you to try it!

Our next Curious Kids session starts March 21st! The thing I love about our Curious Kids sessions, is that every session has some kid favourites, mixed in with some brand new classes and returning classes. There is always something for someone. Lego, Drama, Musical Theatre, Dungeons&Dragons, we are always trying to broaden our horizons. The thing I love most is the social aspect of it all. Meeting new friends, having fun, creating, learning the list goes on. I can’t wait to start our new session next week!

-Travis

What comes to mind when you hear the words “music theory”?

Seems boring? Dry? Complicated? Guess again!

Music theory can be so much fun! There is an infinite number of games and activities we can use to help little ones getting familiar with the basics of music. Even before starting to actually learn to play an instrument, they can be exposed to a bunch of musical concepts in ways that engage their mind and their senses.

Our teachers are always thinking about new ways to introduce kids of all ages to music. Here’s one kid who’s having the time of his life with Travis!

First, Ryder is learning about note values. Each square block equals one beat. Some notes are worth one beat, or two beats, or half a beat. Some blocks represent a rest – a silent beat in the music. By placing all these blocks in a certain order one after the other, Ryder essentially just wrote his own rhythmic composition!

Ryder is also playing with cards that represent the sections of the keyboard. Each card must be placed in the right order, and then he carefully position each letter representing a note on the right key. When he’s big enough to finally sit at a real piano, Ryder will already know how to find a C or a G. It will make it very easy and fun to start learning to play!

Keep an eye on this blog to get a quick description of some of our games in the future!