Make at Home Projects: Week 4

Our library district has extended our closure through early May. We are forming work groups to try and work out what summer learning, ongoing programming and connecting digitally may look like. There are so many unknowns at this point, that I get overwhelmed. I appreciate having the Make at Home project to practice creating digital content, and to start thinking about how the content I've already created can be expanded and enhanced for a more interactive experience with our communities.

The entire Make at Home Playlist is available on my Youtube Account

4/6: Pixel Art, Part 1: Pen and Paper
My husband recommended this project to me. During Winter 2020 Girls Who Code @ Vancouver, one of my club member's presented on the pixel art she had created throughout the 4 years she has been involved with FVRL's Girls Who Code. It was quite touching. I'm also acutely aware of the digital divide in our community, so I wanted to create an alternative pixel art project, that only required pencil and paper. I/ve done this project as part of a 2-hour Unplugged Coding workshop, but I usually cheat and use Excel to create a grid and print it out. I usually extend this project with Perler Beads, but not knowing if that's something kids have at home, I focused more on the math of measuring out and creating your own grid on paper. It was quite satisfying, but I love measuring things. :D

4/7: Pixel Art 2: Digital using Piskel
Piskel is a really fun and easy-to-learn software. It's free, cloud-based, and pretty powerful for a free online pixel editor. I know people who have created game sprites in Piskel and then use them in their video game builds. Pretty cool.

4/8: Pop-Up Cards
I recently made pop-up cards with the students at the Juvenile Detention Center. I don't know why I had never done a pop-up card before, the basic design is really simple. I can tell this will be one of my go-to projects.

4/9-4/114: Tiny Diorama
I love tiny things! I wanted to do an Altoids tin diorama, but I guessed not everyone hoards tins the way I do, so I found a couple of good alternative boxes to turn into tiny dioramas, and even how to make your own. Due to Youtube's 15-minute limit, I broke this project into 3 sections.