Christmas Rag Wreaths

 
For the last session this term - and for 2011! - the Children Made Christmas Rag Wreaths!
It was so, so easy and a great project to do to a little festive music in the background!
First of all, 3 colours of fabric were chosen. Strips of fabric were cut to approx 3 inches by 1 inch. Around 30 strips were needed of each colour.

Then the children were given a piece of wire to bend and tie into a circle, star or heart shape. Then they got busy tieing each fabric piece to the wire to fill the whole shape. Remember the order of your colours when you make yours!

So gorgeous! They even tied ribbon to the top and wrote Christmas messages in the centre.

Merry Christmas to everyone - from all of us at the Art Club!
See you next year!!

Paper Cone Wreaths

This week the children made Paper Cone Wreaths. It was so much fun!

Firstly, the children cut out sidcs from cardboard and covered them with wrapping paper. Then they stuck a loop of ribbon on the back.

Then they got their 2 sheets of A3 paper (one wrapping, one plain) and folded them so that they each would have 8 squares.

They cut them out and then rolled them up to form cones and stuck with tape.

Next they were given half a poly ball and some gem stickers to decorate it with.

Then all that was left to do was assemble all the pieces onto the disc with tape!

And all was complete and ready to hang!

Marbled Christmas Cards

So this week the children in the Art Club made Marbled Christmas Cards!

We had so much fun making marbled holly berries and making pop-up holly leaves. Some of the children were loving this project so much that they made three cards each!

Marbling is easy! Just drop the paint into a bucket of water and swirl the colours together with a stick. Then put your polystyrene shape into the paint slowly and pull out quickly.

When the 'berries' were dry they were stuck onto the card with super strong glue.

Then the children were given some ribbon to make a border. The holly leaves were cut out and arranged with the berries. Lots of different designs started to emerge. Pink leaves, blue leaves, floating berries, multiple berries on top of one another and lots of other colourful decorations!

Just 2 more weeks of Art Club left in 2011! Happy Christmas everyone!

Inside a Bee Colony Artwork

For the last 2 weeks the children have been busy making an artwork called 'Inside a Bee colony'!

For the first week they made a paper pulp mixture using newspaper, marble powder, water and pva glue. They looked at pictures of bees and made their raised, relief shapes from the paper pulp and glued them to a large sheet of ply.

When the bees had dried, the whole artwork was given a layer of white emulsion. The children made hexagonal templates and got to work drawing the honeycomb all over the board.

To fill the artwork with even more bees, the children each drew a 2D bee next to their 3D or 'relief' bee.

Then it was time to get painting! We decided on making lots of shades of oranges for the honeycomb and a mix of yellows, blacks and blues for the bees. The children worked brilliantly together, helping make sure every white space was filled by the end of the session.

I think you'll agree that the finished artwork is superb! Well done everybody!

Sparkly Acetate Animals

So this week the children got into making Sparkly Acetate Animals. They are filled with confetti so when you give them a shake, all the confetti moves around and sparkles in the light!

First of all they decided on their shape, drew it onto some A4 paper and cut the shapes out of 2 sheets of Acetate.

Then they got some strips of selotape and carefully secured the two shapes together, all round the edges, leaving a hole or approx 1 inch space.

Next they fed some confetti shapes into the hole and sealed it up.

Finally they added glass painted features on the top of their animal.

Love this project! Great process and beautiful results. Here are some of the finished ones - enjoy!

Tape Sculpture Project

Last week we had the most fun in an Art Club so far this term! Both the children and I agreed that making tape sculptures was so much fun!

I brought in a range of large objects including plastic flowerpots, outdoor light casings, wellington boots and small wooden chairs.

The process was simple- cover the whole object in tape with the sticky side up, then re-cover the whole object again with the tape sticky side down.

After this process, I used a sharp blade to cut the tape away from the form inside it. This is a careful process to make sure that cuts are made in the right places! Then it was up to the children to tape up the seams to create the finished sculpture!

The children were so overjoyed with their finished pieces. You can't get better than a double thumbs up!

I made a display around the willow in the garden to show the amazing work off to the parents - they were all very impressed. Enjoy!