Art Adventure: "Stained Glass" Easter Eggs

I've been so swamped with school, I literally just realized that Easter is only two weeks away. How did that happen?

I thought I would squeeze in one Easter craft.

"Stained Glass" Easter Eggs
 

 

Supplies:

• wax paper (or plastic wrap)
• permanent marker
• tissue paper, cut or torn into small pieces
• school glue
• brush

 

Mix glue (eyeball it, a couple tablespoons if it's just one or two, more if you have the whole Brady Bunch) and water. I just add some and stir until I have a runny consistency. You can go half and half if you want.

Use the marker to draw your shape on the wax paper. Go as big or small as you want. Ideas other than an egg shape: flowers, chicks, bunnies. Then FLIP IT OVER! You want the marker on the back, if it is painted with the glue/water it will run.

Use the brush to paint the glue/water inside your shape and start putting on the tissue paper. You can be meticulous, or random. I was working with a three year old, so we went random.

  

Let your pieces overlap the edge of your shape. 

When it's all filled in, dab over the whole thing with the glue mix. This will make sure all is glued down and sealed in. 

Now, there's nothing left to do but wait, wait, wait.

Once it's dry, grab a pair of scissors and trim out your shape.

Supposedly, you can now peel off the wax paper. Your tissue paper would totally stick together, but I found that my tissue paper was firmly glued to the wax paper. It really doesn't matter much. When you put it in the window, the light still shines through.

Eh, dreary day, but still nice and colorful!

It would peel off plastic wrap, but I just find plastic wrap to be a pain to deal with. Wax paper works even if it doesn't peel off. 

Art Adventure: Decorating a Piñata

Last week we made our piñatas, so now it is time to decorate them.

There really are as many options as your imagination can dream up. You can paint it, or add anything type of material. But I am going to focus on a more traditional way of decorating.

Supplies:

• tissue paper
• cardstock
• school glue
• tape (optional)

You've seen the piñatas decorated with their festive fringe. You can simply cut a strip of tissue paper and then cut fringe and add that to your piñata. 

But, I'm going to show you how to make puffier fringe. (My seventh grade Spanish teacher taught me this.)

I like to just keep the tissue paper folded and cut off my strip. You want it to be a couple inches wide. Feel free to unfold the paper to cut if that makes you more comfortable.

Take a strip and lay it out. Near the edge, down the length of the strip, add a thin bead of glue.

Fold the long edges together and press to seal, BUT do NOT crease.

Gabe and Chi helped a little bit with this, but it's not the most exciting part and a little tricky, so I wound up doing most of this part.

Once we had many glued, we cut it into fringe.

Now, options for add-ons. We use cardstock for these. Ours is going to be a fish, so we needed a tail and fins.

We drew those on cardstock and cut them out. We used glue to adhere them, but added some tape to hold them in place while they dried.

We used the tail to hide the hole, so we made two pieces and glued one to each side of the hole. We then left that alone so it could later be filled.

We started at the tail and put a bead of glue on the piñata, and then glued the fringe around.

Tear it off if it's too long.

Add the next fringe, changing colors if you chose.

When you reach obstacles, like the fins, you simply glue the fringe between them, tearing off the excess.

We threaded the fringe right through the paperclip.

So, let's have a little aside about a more traditional kind of piñata, a star.

Source

To make the points of a star, you will need to make cones out of cardstock by rolling them into a cone shape.

Before, gluing or tape the cone, cut thin strips of tissue paper and glue or tape about five strips to the inside of the point of the cone.

Then role and secure. around the base of the cone, cut fringe and bend the fringe. Tape this fringe to the piñata before you start with the decorative colored fringe.

Okay, back to the fish. So you once our piñata was covered, we added googly eyes.

Now, we decided not to fill and break ours. Our fish, now dubbed Clarke, will be staying. If we were filling him, I would gently open the tail pieces, carefully fill the piñata. Place a piece of tape over the opening.

Then we glue the tail pieces together.

And that's it. We have Clarke our fish now.

(Just ignore all the mess. We didn't have time to clean; we were making a piñata.)       

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Art Adventure: Color Field

This is another master artist lesson. 

Mark Rothko was an American painter that worked in a famous circle of artists in the 1940s in New York City. This group consisted mostly of surrealist or abstract expressionist painters. His later work is characterized by large floating rectangles of color. These became known as Color Field paintings.

The National Gallery of Art has a great little introduction to Rothko if you care to check it out.

You can see, even in the picture, that there is a lot of depth within the colors. It is even more expressive in person. Rothko, and other contemporaries of his, believed in the power of color to affect and elicit emotion.

Color Field Pictures

Supplies:

• tissue paper (2 or 3 colors)
• one piece white cardstock
• glue
• paint brush
• scissors

Instead of using paint, we will use translucent tissue paper to build up the subtle layers of color. When picking color remember that the colors will show through and effect each other, so pick colors that will blend well. Any colors you normally mix together to make another (red, blue, and yellow) will definitely work.

Mix glue with water so you have a thin, brushable glue.

Start with one color for the whole piece of cardstock. Using the paintbrush, cover the whole piece of cardstock and lay a sheet of tissue paper down, smooth out the art bubbles, but don't worry too much about wrinkles. We'll have wrinkles.

Then begin to build up layers. You do not want to tear your tissue paper into tiny pieces, but you can either cut or tear the paper.

Here we have a second layer of yellow on the bottom half only to get variety.

Start creating floating rectangles of color. Overlapping in different places will create that depth found in Rothko's paintings.

 

If a color seems too bold or bright, try overlapping it with the background color.

You will not always need to brush on more glue, only use it when the paper is not wet enough for the new layer to cling. You can put the glue on top rather than under as well.

It's okay to go off the edges. When finished and while wet, you can carefully fold the edges to the back. Or you can wait for it to dry and trim with scissors.

If you get super impatient waiting for it to dry, you can use a hairdryer; just use sweeping even motions across the whole paper. 

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow Me,  Blue Cricket Design, What I Whipped Up, Wicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH) The ArtsyGirl Connection,  Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming