Glue Pictures- faux embossed metal

This is a project I found in an Usborne activity book. It's very simple and needs only a few supplies: white glue in a bottle, a piece of card, and gold and black acrylic paint. 

I've seen this lesson done with glue and then you put aluminium foil on top, but this skips that step and it still looks good- like faux embossed antique metal.

So each student needs a piece of heavy card (we used cut up cereal boxes)and a bottle of white glue 

(FYI: we used Elmers brand glue for this- it is fairly thick and that's good. I think some no-name generic school glues might be too runny and therefore not work. So test your particular brand of glue out before teaching this to a class. Tacky glue would also work brilliantly as it's thicker than regular white glue.)

You can choose a subject matter for the project for more focus, or leave it open-ended. I chose birds.

Draw your design onto the card lightly in pencil. 

Practice in a sketchbook or scrap paper first. Try to fill the page.

 Then, using a glue bottle, slowly and carefully pass over all the pencil lines.

You may have to touch up areas. Just take your time. 

If you make a mistake, just wipe it off and start again.

Let dry flat overnight. 

By the next class, the card will have curved/warped a bit, but that's ok. 

The glue will have also flattened out a bit.

Now it's time to create a faux antique metal effect. Paint the whole picture with gold or bronze or silver metallic acrylic paint. Let dry. 

Once it's dry, get some black acrylic paint ready and a damp paper towel or cloth.

Paint the entire picture with black paint and then, using the damp paper towel, gently rub away the black paint, revealing the gold underneath. This gives sort of an antiquing effect.

   

You can use this technique with lots of age groups, from elementary to Grade 8 as you can see from the results below.