School Holiday Project 16: Making a Garden Collage

Today's project is truly a brilliant one for developing skills with the kids. In this collage they will be painting, cutting, pasting, drawing, coloring and embossing. I always like to make an example before getting the kids in to do a project. I photographed my own steps to show you what to do, as I foresaw that things would get a little hectic once the little ones arrived. But I did manage to snap a couple of photos of their creative process as well. When comparing my collage with theirs, it will become obvious that I have allowed them a lot of freedom when it comes to colour choices, layout, drawing and coloring. In the end, they did what was required, but managed to add their own initiative as well. That is how art should be taught to children.

Cut a paper plate in half.

Cut the rim off. The rim will be turned into a worm and the inside of the plate will become a ladybug.

Describe two circles on cardboard with a compass.

Cut the circles out with sharp scissors.

Choose the colours for your bugs. I chose Deep Rose for the ladybug and Permanent Yellow for the worm. I used acrylic paint for my projects, but you can use craft paint with equal success.

 I used a no 10 Flat brush to paint the ladybug and the worm with.

I dolloped the paint right onto the surface, making it easy for the kids to simply spread it out and cover the areas that needed to be painted.

Once the ladybug was dry, I used Lamp Black to paint the dots.

Use a smaller flat brush to paint the dots. Press down and twist the brush in a circular motion. Do NOT use new brushes for this as it does damage to the bristles. Set the painted items aside to dry.

Put glue dots on the cut-out cardboard circles to glue some eyes on. I used Tombow craft glue for this.

Glue the dots on and allow them to dry before continuing.

I then used a black Sharpie marker to draw faces onto the cardboard circles.

The mouths were drawn in a red Sharpie marker.

Cut a pipe cleaner in quarters.

On the back of the cardboard faces, draw two glue lines running from the eyes up.

Curl the ends of the pipe cleaners.

Stick it down on the glue lines.

Once the glue is dry, lather the backs of the faces in wood or craft glue.

Stick the faces onto the bugs and allow the glue to dry.

 

Find some cupcake wrappers. You will need three per child.

Flatten the wrappers open and cut the riffled sides open all around.

You now have three flower heads.

If you have A3 paper or cardboard, you can use that. Alternatively, glue along the length of an A4 printer paper.

Paste a second paper down on the glue line and you will have created a large enough surface to construct the project on.

Glue the backs of the flowers.

Stick these down on the paper. The kids had different ideas than mine for their layout and gave them free reign with it.

I then used a paint marker to draw the stems, leaves and grass, as I wanted to introduce the kids to this medium. Feel free to use koki's, markers, crayons or even pencils to do this.

This step is optional, but great fun if you can manage it. I used some embossing plates to create texture to the coloring. If you do not have embossing plates, you can achieve similar results by placing the paper on rough wood or any other grainy surface.

A normal coloring pencil brings out the embossed image from the back.

The background has now been prepared for the bugs.

Glue the backs of the bugs.

Stick them down in the garden to complete the project.

With the example done, it was time to call the kids over and they had loads of fun painting the bugs.

They loved drawing the faces with the markers.

This little one could not care less about the flower heads at the top of her page. She loves drawing flowers and insisted on doing so.

They then discovered the battery operated sharpener and for a while the art was forgotten as they had too much fun sharpening the pencils.

Pride!

"Anything you can do, I can do better!"

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Remember to keep nurturing your TALENT for making PRETTY things.
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