Bubble Print Hydrangeas

Here's a fairly simple hydrangea project using bubble painting. The original project was posted on the Discount School Supplies website found via Pinterest. I think using bubble painting to create these hydrangeas is an absolutely brilliant idea and I was super excited to try out this project! It took a bit of time to figure out the best way that would work for my students, so this is what I came up with.

pretty hydrangeas

I've posted about bubble painting previously here and here.

Warning- this is a MESSY technique!!  Lay out lots of newspaper and cover your clothes. 

The bubble paint drips everywhere and when the bubbles pop, tiny specks of paint fly all over the 

place including your face, hands, clothes, etc. 

Basically, you mix up a big batch of bubble paint: some tempera paint with a big squirt of dish soap and then lots water to thin it out. I find an inky consistency works well. I'm sure there are more accurate recipes out there somewhere... Do some test bubbles on a sheet of white paper first. If the prints are too light, add more paint. Then, pour some paint into whatever size container you'd like the hydrangeas to be- if you want them nice and big and true to size, use aluminium pie pans. Using straws, blow the bubble paint so it comes over the edges of the container and lightly place a sheet of white paper on top. 

I find it takes students a few tries to get some really nice prints. So give them lots of paper to practice/work with. Some of the bubble prints just don't end up looking nice, so it's sometimes a bit of trial and error. They should make about 3 - 5 prints, depending again, on how large you're working. 

Let these sheets dry.

Next class, once the prints are dry, have students draw big 'hydrangea'-type flowers shapes around their bubble prints (post some photos of hydrangeas so students can refer to them). Cut them out.

Students can mix and match colours. 

We used green paper for the background. Arrange some blooms onto the paper and overlap them and move them around until you get a pleasing composition. Glue down. Then fold some green paper (we used two different shades of green for variety) a bunch of times and draw a leaf shape. Cut it out and glue the leaves under the blooms.

Some Grade 6 results: