Tuesday's Art Adventure: Sand Casting

I have a love/hate relationship with Plaster of Paris. But the excitement kids have when they cast something is too priceless to pass up.

Sand Casting

Supplies:

• plaster of paris
• water
• sand
• some sort of box or container (I used leftover plastic plant pots from the nursery)
• 3-D objects (we used and army man and legos)
• tempera paint and brushes

First pick your container and fill about half way with wet sand. Make your sand sandcastle consistency - not too wet, but holds form.

Now you have an idea how big your object can be. Pick out something that you like that will not be hurt by sand. You can even just use your hand or foot if you want too.

Press your object into the sand and press the sand together if it cracks. 

Carefully pry your object out of the sand.

Mix your plaster of paris, 2 parts plaster to 1 part water. Stir until it is a smooth consistency.

For the army man, we just carefully poured the plaster to cover. We made it more like a plaque. For the legos, we thought it would be funny to have separate little blocks, so we used a spoon to carefully fill each indention.

Cue the Jeopardy waiting music. Let it set up. Now would have been a good time to use a bent paper clip as a hook and set that in the army man plaque, but we were so focused on the funny legos, that we didn't remember to do it. But you could.

Once dry and hard, pry out of the sand.

Brush the sand off and give it a rinse. 

Some sand will stay adhered to the plaster, but you want the excess off. Let dry.

Break out the paint. We used tempera because it is easy to clean up and works fine for this.

Once dry, your child has their own little casting.

How funny are those legos?

Couple of extra tips:

If your child has a sandbox, just borrow some sand, you will be able to put it back when you are done.

It's best to do the plaster of paris part on the grass, so if you spill it's no big deal. Just hit the spill with the hose and it will fine.

Rinse out whatever you mix the plaster in and with right away, but again, just do it outside rather than worrying about sending it down the drain.

So, now that you bought all that plaster, I'll have another project next week that uses plaster of paris too. Don't miss it!

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