Cassette Tape portraits

At the moment in art, We ask doing portraits of famous people. However they arent normal portraits. Mrs O S asked us if we would like to use cassette tapes to make our portraits different. We all jumped for the idea and were really excited about it. The first thing that we need to do was get a picture of our chosen celebrity. The celebrity that I chose to do is Olly Murs because he is one of my favorite singers. We went to the computer room to select our images from google and then used a site called pixlr to make the picture black and white (the black would be cassette tapes). We each printed of one picture and went back to the art room.
We were then given the choice whether we wanted to do the portrait on an A2 or A3 page. I chose A3 because I thought that A2 was a bit big! We then had to draw the outline of our person and shade in the black parts of the picture. Once this was finished, we had to get the 2 cassette tapes that all of us had collected and use them to fill in the shaded areas in the picture. This is the stage that I am at now! I find it quite difficult to decide which way the tapes look best but I am getting there!
Here are a few examples of what we are trying to achieve:

James Taylor

Bob Marley

The Beatles

Gaisce- the presidents award!:)

Gaisce – The President's Award, is an award in Ireland, earned by young people between the ages of 15 and 25 for participating in several activities for a certain Amount of time. There are three awards; bronze, silver and gold. Myself and other TYs are currently working on the bronze award, on which you must take part in a physical activity for 13 weeks, a personal skill for 13 weeks and community service for 13 weeks! You then must choose one to do for an extra 13 weeks! For my physical activity,i chooses to do badminton, for my skill I have chosen piano and I am helping out with the celbridge brownies for my community service! In April we will be going on a hike to complete the bronze award!

Good news all around

I have a good bit of news to tell everyone! Firstly, in relation to the briary gap competition. We have all been waiting patiently to hear if either of the dramas had gotten through to the final in cork! Today in religion, Mrs G walked in with a face that was difficult to read! I couldn't tell if she had good or bad news for us. This was probably because she had both! Unfortunately my group will not progress any further in the competition, however I didn't really mind about the is because the other group did get through! I'm happy that there will be one group representing the class and the school in the finals and I know that they will do so fantastically!:D
That's not all the good news I have......There's more!

On the 21st on January, two judges from the enterprise board came to the school to judge our mini-company projects! Four groups were short listed for the possibility of progressing in the Kildare county final! One of the groups was " Williams words" , a group from my class! Since then everyone had been waiting anxiously to hear the news! Fortunately, on Tuesday, Mrs P gave them the good news that they had been waiting for! I'm really happy that a group will be there to represent the class and also two groups to represent the school! (Hair couture also got through to the competition!)

Williams words- Shakesphere dictionary

Hair Couture

                                



And Finally….…………OUR F1 CAR DESIGN IS FINALLY FINISHED! It was sent off to our make centre today! Now all that is left to do is the portfolio and sponsorship and we will be all set for the comp on the 8th of march!Eilise:Dxx

Teddy Bears in the making......

At the moment in Home Ec, we have started making teddies. We were given the list of materials before Christmas so that we would have everything that we needed when we came back after the Christmas holidays! The material that I chose is denim! We also had to get brown embroidery thread and eyes!
Since we do cookery in our Tuesday double class, Ms M told us that we would be sewing in our Friday double class! So far i have drawn our teddy bear patterns, pinned them to our fabric, cut the pieces out and started my teddy's arms, legs and ears. For the arms,legs and ears, you have to tack two pieces together before using the sewing machine! This is what I did in class today! I had finished the tacking in the class last Friday so Ms M brought some sewing machines into the kitchen so that myself and other people who were finished could sew the limbs together properly! I then removed the tacking from the pieces, except for one arm which chose not to cooperate and had to be
ripped back and started again! After all of the tacking was removed I started tacking the ears onto the back of the head! I will post pictures next week!
Eilise :Dxx

Movie time!:)

Since finishing our dramas for the briary gap competition, we have started watching The pursuit of happiness, as it links in with the topic of poverty.The movie, starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, tells the story about a man named Christopher Gardner. Chris has invested in a device known as a "Bone Density scanner".  However, they do not sell as they are marginally better than the current technology at a much higher price. As Chris tries to figure out how to sell them, his wife leaves him, he loses his house, his bank account, and credit cards. Forced to live out in the streets with his son, Chris is now desperate to find a steady job; he takes on a job as a stockbroker, but before he can receive pay, he needs to go through 6 months of training.
I am really enjoying watching the movie, and I think that it conveys a very good message of how homelessness and poverty can affect anybody!
Eilíse :D

Formula One!

Since finding out that team Rápido y Furioso had gotten through to the regional finals of the F1 in schools competition, We have all been working really hard on our design for our cars, and also trying to promote our team and gain support. The team consists of myself, Katie H, Orlaith K, Ciara K and Ciara Molloy.
This week has been especially difficult as the design for the car has to be finished and sent to our make centre by this Friday!! We have been using any time possible to go to the tech room and finish our design on the solid works and we are almost finished. We have changed our minds a lot but I think that we finally know what we want the car to look like.

• This is the first design that we did on the solid works, however we changed our minds about how we wanted it to look so we made a second design!

Design #1 on solid works!

• This is a slide show showing our second design!

                               Design #2 on solid works

Briary Gap Drama competition!

As I have said in previous blog posts, we have been working on Dramas in religion. There are two groups, one doing their play on homelessness and then my group are doing our play on the effects of war. our play consisted of two different settings. One was in a doctors office, where people who had been affected by war were talking about their experiences to the doctor, and then the other was a flashback of what each person remembered.

The day had finally come to perform the dramas in the competition. On Tuesday the 29th of January class síocháin set off to the arts centre in mullingar to perform what we had worked very hard on. The bus journey took about an hour. When we arrived a group of guys who were also performing offered to take our props backstage and we were shown to our dressing room, which was right beside the stage. The dramas were not starting until half eleven and we were not on until one so this gave us a chance to check out the stage. It wasn't too big but it was different to where we were used to practising. We all got changed into our costumes but we had some time to kill so we decided to go to McDonald's  as we were all very hungry. When we came back we went into the audience seats to watch the other schools perform their dramas, however we realised that our drama was being moved forward a half an hour so we rushed off for one last practise before waiting nervously to be called. When this did happen, we all walked anxiously down to the side of stage and got our props organised. When the curtain opened it was very hard to see the audience, which in my opinion made it easier because you couldn't see people watching. Apart from the length of time it took us to change the props between each scene,Overall the play went quite well. the judge came on stage after we finished and gave us praise and also constructive criticism so that we could improve.There were many sighs of relief as we walked off the stage and we could finally relax.

Both plays were finished up and we were dressed at about half one. the bus wasn't coming until half two so this meant that we had time to kill. Myself and six other girls decided to go for a walk to the park across the road from the arts centre. Just our luck, on the walk back the heavens opened and we got soaked through. 

Overall it was an amazing experience and now we just have to wait for the results to come to see if either team got through to the finals in cork!

Mullingar Arts Centre

Eilísexx:D