Faux Stained Glass with Tin Foil & Sharpies

Here's a lovely faux stained glass project I've done for the past few years.

It always yields very pretty results. I usually teach this lesson right before Christmas, so students have a chance to do a Christmas/holiday theme if they want.

See my previous posts and instructions HERE and HERE and HERE.

For the background, we use cereal boxes. I collect these from teachers.

Cut the boxes down using a sturdy paper cutter.

On regular photocopy paper, students draw their chosen stained glass design. My student look up images online. Just type in 'stained glass patterns', etc. I encourage them to include a border. 

Then they slide their drawing into a page protector and outline all their pencil lines with a Sharpie. Then they colour in the design with coloured sharpies. 

Cut away the design and staple it onto the cereal box that has been covered with crumpled up aluminum foil. This year we tried attaching it using double sided tape, but it DID NOT stick at all. 

Stick with stapling, trust me!

Some finished Grade 7-9 artworks:

 

Two friends did a this artwork together.

A few Christmas themed ones:

A group of my girls always does a theme together. For this they did a mash-up of Disney heroines mixed with the villian, lol

A bass playing a bass!

 

Altered Art History

This is a cool project I generally do at the end of the year with my high school class. 

I call it 'Altered Art History". It's actually based on a project I did when I was either in art school or in high school art class. I can't remember which. 

Basically, you take any famous artwork and alter it in some unusual or creative way. For mine, I re-drew a Brancusi sculpture (The Kiss) and drew it melting away.

Students can choose any medium, but most choose acrylics or watercolours.

They have to submit a little write up at the end. 

This one is a Bob Ross painting after a wildfire- a commentary on climate change. 

 

Northern Lights Watercolour Paintings

Right before our winter break, I had a guest artist come and do a mini workshop with one of my junior high art classes. Inna Nagaytseva is a self-taught watercolor artist from the Ukraine who moved to Canada a couple of years ago. She runs an art studio in Calgary, Alberta where she offers classes and workshops. See her work on her Instagram page: @innanagaytseva

She brought supplies with her as she only uses cotton watercolour paper and I don't use that. She also brought pieces of black corrugated plastic for the kids to work on top of. I've never seen these used before so it was interesting to see.

Cotton watercolour paper, for those not familiar, is best for really wet-on-wet techniques, which Inna teaches. When it comes to texture, cotton paper is typically smoother than cellulose. That's why when you apply watercolors to it, you don't have to do a lot of blending. The colors move themselves and mix with ease. The only downside is that if you want to add texture to your painting, it will require extra effort.

Students started by painting both sides of their paper with water. Then they used their laptops to find a reference photo of northern lights to refer to. They used vertical strokes in the sky. 

I think my students did a great job and they enjoyed learning from a professional artist!

Cute & Cozy "Kittens with Sweaters" Craft

This is a super adorable cozy winter textile craft I did with a mixed class of Kindergarten, Grade 1, 2 and 3 kids yesterday on my last day of school before the Christmas break. It was the second last period of the day, so I was expecting crazy behaviour but the kids were all so great!!

This project popped up randomly on my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago and I knew I had to do it. See the original post below. It was shared in a public art group:

 (Art teacher collaboration (elementary + middle + high school art teacher). 

I altered the project in a couple of ways. Thank you to the original poster for sharing this project :)))

So yes, you have to pre-cut all the cardboard 'rainbows'. I hate cutting cardboard so this was not fun, lol. If anyone has cardboard cutting scissors they could recommend, please leave a comment! I always try to use Amazon boxes for cardboard projects as they are a little thinner and therefore a bit easier to cut. I made a template out of cardstock, then traced and cut out 17 of these shapes. 

I'm lucky to have been given a lot of yarn donations of the years so I have a big stock pile. I went though it all and pulled out all the multicoloured yearn for this project. Each ball of yarn was different, so the kids could choose the one they like. 

For adaptations for the youngest kids or students with weaker fine motor skills. I highly recommend chunky yarn- it is easier to manipulate and is also faster to wrap.

I also made a blank template cat face outline that I photocopied. 

That way, the kids would draw their own cat faces.

I demonstrated to the kids then they went to work. They started by choosing their yarn and unravelling a length from the ball. They taped the end to the back of their cardboard with a small piece of masking tape. Then they wrapped the yarn all the way around the cardboard. We didn't use any glue.

The kids were SO QUIET at this stage- it took them a lot of concentration getting the yarn just wrapped just right.

Once they were finished wrapping their yarn, they cut off the end and Myself and the Kindergarten assistants helped them tape it again on the back. Then they drew and coloured their cat faces. They cut them out, then took them over to assistant who was manning a hot glue gun station. They chose where they wanted their face and it was glued on for them. Then another teacher, who was helping, asked each child what the name of their kitten was and they wrote the name on the back of the kitten- so cute!!

The kids LOVED the craft and asked afterwards if they could play with their kitten. 

They had a lot of fun with them!

Here are some of the finished ones I managed to snap of pic of: