(click to see larger)
First grade art project: Geometric color decoupage (Mod Podge), with botanical themed stencil overlay.
Framed, with plastic surface (not glass) -Ikea.
Materials used: Color-Aid papers, Mod podge, heavy weight art paper. Roughly 11″ x 15″

I volunteered for the art project, which will be for sale to the parents at this year’s auction fundraiser. Every year they have one big group project, and then one project for 22 individual items. Last year I helped with a quilt. This year I thought I would keep it manageable and do framed works of paper art. For the record, 22 of anything is a lot. :)

My inspiration hit when I saw this art project on Pinterest. I liked the multi-layered effect:

Here are photos from throughout the art project.

I brought the materials to art class, and the kids went to work. To save money, I bought the cheapest frames I could find, and we used the backing cardboard from the frame as the “canvas”.

I pre-cut some colorful scraps of Color-aid paper that I had left over from a college design class. I’d kept them all this time because whey were so nice and vibrant. They were just waiting for the right project.

It’s okay if the Mod Podge gets all over – that’s the way decoupage works. You want the paper wet with it. It dries clear and hard.

The kids could absolutely have cut up their own paper, but I wanted to control the look of things: I wanted the geometric shapes to be uniform. Also, I had limited paper – barely enough as it turns out.
For the multi-color look, I made sure each kid had at least one scrap of each color. I picked out the brightest, saturated colors – nothing too dark, too light, brown, etc. At the last minute I threw in some polka dot origami paper for fun.

Here you can see the texture of the dried collage. I went over them again with another coat, to seal it all up. Two or three coats looks better that one.

I filled in the last empty spaces for the kids. I suppose it might have been cheating a little, but for the 1st grade age level, I think they did great and got to have fun.

So this is completion of part one (only half are shown here!). These are pretty cool “as-is”..

Next, (on a different day), I had the kids draw pictures on some nice quality paper.
Originally, I was going to use paint, the way they did in my inspiration project, but paper turned out to have the same stencil effect, without the mess.

We talked about drawing things from Nature, and focusing on skinny, curvaceous shapes (because it would look best in our stencil concept).

I cut out the plants/”botanicals” with an x-acto knife.

Some of the shapes I cut out were so cute.

When I layered the paper over the collage, the desired effect was achieved.

After a last layer of Mod Podge over the collage boards, I gently set the papers on top, and they stuck well enough.

Framed. (click to see larger)

Ready for Sale!