Making Art with Children

This past Sunday we had perfect weather for making some fun summer outdoor art here at The Carle!  One Sunday a month we have an additional art activity in The Studio for visitors to try.  This month, the Studio’s summer intern, Alison, designed the perfect project for a sunny summer afternoon, creating colorful collage papers.

Visitors started in The Studio drawing pictures with magic markers onto color-diffusing paper (very similar to coffee filters).

The next step was bring the drawings outside and get them all wet! Using a variety of liquid watercolors in spray bottles and pipettes to add colors.  The magic markers and watercolors mixed together and created beautiful washy designs.

 

 

We hung the wet papers in the sunshine….

 

and in a little while they were dry ready to be cut and made into collages!

The paper we used for this project was donated to us on a giant roll from a mystery source (anyone have an idea where it could have come from??) and you could get similar effects from coffee filter paper or prepackaged color diffusing papers from any art supply catalog.  Once this type of light-weight paper is dry, it is thin enough to be cut and glued using just liquid starch glue.  Combine handmade papers with store-bought tissue papers at home to create unique collages, cards or gifts using our step-by-step guide here.  Make your own liquid starch glue with our recipe here.

We have a printable activity sheet for this project in the works, but until then take a look at some of The Carle’s other printable activities here.  For more information about the next Special Sunday and other upcoming events click here.

What’s your family’s favorite outdoor art project?

Tags: Eric Carle Activity, Eric Carle Theme, Special Sunday, Tissue Paper Collage

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 8:21 am and is filed under Activities, At The Carle, Collage, Elementary School, High School, In the Studio, Infants & Toddlers, Materials, Middle School, Painting, Preschool, Public Art Program. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.