Contact Paper Collage

This may have been one of my favorite projects all year.  It is a really good one day project with little to no mess or clean up and a great way to use scrap and tissue paper.  The subject of these sculptural collages was Spring, though it could go in so many other directions.  Students got pieces of contact paper that I precut into 8 1/2in by 22in (more or less) sheets.  They were told to fold a crease in the middle and lay the paper open with the sticky side up.  They then peeled away the protective sheet to the crease and were given little pieces of tape to secure each corner to their tables.  At this point, half of the sticky paper is exposed and half is still protected.  On the sticky side, students arranged scraps of tissue paper to create Spring landscapes.  When they were finished, they removed the other half of the protective paper and folded this half over to cover the exposed tissue paper collage.  The finished pieces were kind of magical; students were surprised and amazed that they had created art that they could see through and enjoy from both sides.  Also great was that they had to help each other manipulate and fold the sheets of contact paper.  These would be beautiful hanging from a mobile or in front of windows.  

The Door do your Dream House - Sculptural Facades

This was a dynamic introduction for 5th Graders into Architecture and Design.  Students chose photographs of doors and sketched out the facade of their very own dream house that they imagined surrounded that door. They were challenged to incorporate at least three ornamental features (i.e. Bay windows, columns, cornices, pediments, etc. ) that learned about through looking at many images of Victorian Houses.  Students then constructed their facades using cardboard, glue, tape and finished them using bold pastels and tissue paper details.  Materials: photographs of doors, sketch paper, pencils, cardboard, glue, tape, oil pastels, tissue paper, images of Victorian houses and diagrammed vocabulary sheets of Victorian ornamental features. 

Pop-up Landscapes

Since January, this first grade class has been learning all about city scapes and landscapes. The concept was introduced when we read "Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold and students created their own city scapes featuring meaningful places in Brooklyn using oil pastel watercolor resist. We then moved onto landscapes where students were encouraged to create a 2D imaginary landscape using construction paper collage.

With this project we "pulled" our landscapes up off the page to assemble imaginary sculptural landscapes. We explored the different shapes we could make when we folded, bent, ripped, twisted and crumpled strips of construction paper. I demonstrated how to attach these shapes to their paper plates by folding a tab at the end of each strip of paper (a flat surface for their dot of glue). Materials: construction paper cut into strips, leftover paper scraps in various shapes from collage, glue sticks, paper plates.