Craft Spotlight: Fall Leaves Projects

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We’re well into the autumn season, fast approaching winter! Lengthen the season’s stay with some bright and colorful autumn crafts for your classroom. Check out our spotlight below on our R15334 Crafty Leaves, R15335 Spring and Autumn Leaves and R15656 Autumn Paper Bits!

Our autumn craft projects feature golden colors, patterns and natural die-cut leaf shapes for intriguing artwork! Use the leaves to decorate base materials, such as a paper tree trunk. Mix up the arrangements of the leaves on paper to make animal and people figures!

In this video, I show you how to layer and glue together the Crafty Leaves to make a bird in flight! This craft uses simply the Crafty Leaves, glue and a bit of imagination. Find leaves that appear to fan out like feathers on wings. Other leaves can be used to make the body of the bird. A tiny brown leaf was used for the head (but you can use the chestnuts for the bird’s head too!)

Use the gorgeous patterns in our Spring and Autumn Leaves as decorations for picture frames! I took our R52107 Craft Collage Boards and popped out the center so I could use the outside piece as a frame. Peel off the backing to adhere the leaves to the sticky side. I used three colors of the Spring and Autumn Leaves pack, including orange, red and green with the addition of yellow! Arrange the leaves along the sticky side of the frame. You can use both sides of the Spring and Autumn Leaves (one side is printed with flat color while the other side is gussied up with cute patterns!)

Create a lovely autumn tree and talk about the effect of the changing seasons on the tree’s leaves. Demonstrate this with our Autumn Paper Bits! Cut out a tree from brown construction paper. Glue down the leaves around the tree boughs. Make several different trees and paste only green leaves on one tree, orange and red leaves on the second, and leave the last tree blank. Illustrate buds or small twigs on the final tree to show how trees look like in wintertime!

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If you have some of these projects in your classroom craft closet, send us photos of your students’ artwork! We’ll make a feature post and show the blogging world your class’s artistic talent! Email us at subscriber@roylco.ca!

Crafty Leaves Wreath

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Just in time for fall! Send students home with gorgeous wreaths for decoration, made from our R15334 Crafty Leaves and a wreath template! A great way to start off the school year. Read more for our weekly craft challenge (send us photos of your projects)! 

Age: 5+

Duration: 10 minutes

You’ll Need:

• R15334 Crafty Leaves

• Wreath Template

• Scissors

• Glue

• Pencil

This is a pretty simple craft and can be done in less time than recess! Wreaths are great to make for decoration, or as a gift.

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Print out your template onto 8½ x 11″ (21.5 x 28) paper and cut around bold lines. Cut across the dotted line as well.

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Fold an 8.5 x 11″ sheet of card paper. Place your template along the fold line. Trace the outline of the template (along the bold lines) onto the card paper and cut out.

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Unfold the card paper to reveal your wreath base!

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Next, pop out the leaves from the backing. Pick out leaves that you feel will arrange nicely on the wreath.

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Curl up the ends of the leaves using the blunt edge of a pair of scissors.

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Looking like realistic leaves now!

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Arrange the leaves onto the wreath template and glue them down. Tip: Pop out the acorns and chestnuts and place at three or four points around the wreath.

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Ready to hang!

CRAFT CHALLENGE:

Go outside and find some natural objects to add to the wreath: acorns or acorn caps, feathers or twigs! Use a hot glue gun to adhere the found objects to the wreath.

Line-04Show us your wreath ideas! Send photos of your work to subscriber@roylco.ca for publication in our next post. We’d love to hear from you!

Craft Spotlight: Stand Up Self Portraits!

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This week’s Craft Spotlight features our Stand Up Self Portraits! Are you gearing up for Parent-Teacher night? Or are you in need of a project that children can use to introduce themselves to each other? Perfect for “All About Me” crafts, Stand Up Self Portraits encourage children to explore self-expression and self-representation!

Stand Up Self Portraits give students the freedom to experiment with their artwork–use crayons, markers, pencil crayons or a variety of collage materials to decorate the appearance of your portrait!

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Our crafters used markers and crayons to decorate their Stand Up Self Portraits. They used the indicators on the Stand Up Self Portrait help students locate where various facial features belong. There are six little pinprick indicators in total.

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The two topmost indicators represent the points at which to place the eyes. Draw small circles around the indicators to represent pupils. Enclose the pupils in an almond shape to form the eyes. Add details such as eyelashes and eyebrows.

Use the middle two indicators to draw the nose. Finally, the space between the last two indicators can be used to draw the mouth.

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Paste the sides of the Stand Up Self Portrait with yarn, tissue paper or cut construction paper to make the hair!

A great way to introduce students to each other, or prepare the classroom for Parent-Teacher night!

Line-11Let us know how your students’ portraits turned out by sending photos to subscriber@roylco.ca! We’d love to see your classroom artwork!

Take a tour through our virtual Art Gallery!!

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Welcome to the Little Fingers Big Art gallery wrap-up! Today, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of our favorite crafts of the past year. PLUS: I’ll show you a unique way to display your students’ artwork in the classroom! 

I’ve taken our favorite top ten crafts and compiled them below in honor of Little Finger Big Art blog’s first year on the blogosphere! Just click on any of the images below to get linked directly to the craft post.

TIP: To display your students’ artwork, purchase colorful clipboards from any Dollar store! Use one clipboard per student. Hang the clipboards from a wall. If you are unable to drill nails into walls, consider placing adhesive hooks to the walls and hanging the clipboards off those. You can buy adhesive hooks at any department store nearby you!

When children have finished a piece of art, they can clip their art up to their individual clipboard. Send old artwork home with students to add newer artwork to the clipboard art gallery! Children can update their clipboard galleries anytime they finish a 2D illustration.

View our top-ten favorites below!

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1. CLASSROOM BIRDS

Colorful collage materials add texture and brightness to the beautiful bird designs. Find templates for the bird designs here: Bird Template 1 and Bird Template 2. Each student can make their own unique bird and add it to the overall classroom display of birds! Find out here!

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2. SILLY STENCILS FRIENDLY MONSTERS

Grab a handful of Silly Stencils and arrange them to make your very own friendly monster! Any of the stencils can be used as eyes, noses, mouths, legs, bodies and more. Great for exercising dexterity and building image association skills: find out more here!

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3. QUILT MOSAIC BUILDINGS

Arrange beautiful patterned mosaics to make a gorgeous night scene! Use metallic gold and silver gel pens to add detail to the night sky. Learn more about this project here!

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4. ALPHABET TRACING SKILLS

Use our Chipboard Letters to learn about uppercase letters. A great tracing activity that helps encourage image retention through repetition. Try it out!

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5. ROLLY SCROLLY JAPANESE CALLIGRAPHY ART

Use simple brushstrokes to illustrate branches. Add detail with our Leaf Sponges! See the full tutorial here!

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6. JUNK ART ROBOTS

Learn how to put together our Elements Collage pieces to make jivin’ robots! Get inspired to make your own using our instructions. Check it out here!

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7. CRAYON SHAVING STAINED GLASS

Use crayon melts to create a beautiful stained glass material for our Stained Glass Frames. A great way to recycle old crayon stubs! View the full tutorial!

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8. ORIGAMI FIGURES

Stuck trying to make sense of valley folds or inside reverse folds? Don’t stress another minute! Check out our detailed YouTube videos that show you precisely how to make a bird, frog, butterfly, boat, crane and fish! We use our R15208 Really Big Origami Paper so you can see every step along the way.

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9. RUBBING PLATE PLANETS

Our R5841 Optical Illusion Rubbing Plates were used to add interesting effects to planet cutouts. Paired with a cotton swab-brushed background, these planets look stellar! Take a trip to this space-inspired post!

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10. PAPER MACHE BOWL

A happy accident this was! I used a bit of glue with our R15335 Spring and Autumn Leaves and draped them over a plastic bowl to make this colorful creation. Learn more about this project here!

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Thanks for checking out our gallery! We’d love to see some of your artwork! Send us your ideas or photos of projects inspired by our crafts! Send all emails to subscriber@roylco.ca for a chance to be featured in an upcoming blog post. 

Craft Spotlight: Color Diffusing Paper Projects

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This week’s Craft Spotlight showcases our lovely Color Diffusing Paper products! Check out an amazing selection of our fabric-like paper in a variety of different projects. The Color Diffusing Paper is perfect for exploring concepts like diffusion and color mixing!

This post will introduce you to our Color Diffusing products through specially-made videos! The videos feature detailed methods of incorporating the Color Diffusing projects into your educational art program!

To start, we have our R2442 Color Diffusing Leaves! These leaves are specially die-cut in the shapes of leaves to encourage thinking outside the box with your nature art.

Color the leaves with all the colors of the rainbow! Use liquid watercolor on the leaves then spritz the paper with warm water to diffuse the colors throughout. Tip: Don’t use more than three colors on a single Color Diffusing Paper project. Mixing more colors will run the risk of turning the project muddy!

Next up is our R2440 Color Diffusing Paper Flowers! The flowers inspire the same level of creativity as our leaves, but can serve as an optional classroom decoration.

Explore new color combinations! Try a different color on each petal of the flower.

Finally, check out our R2445 Color Diffusing Butterflies!

In this video, we used markers to color in our butterflies. When you spray water onto the butterflies, the marker ink will spread throughout the butterfly cutout.

If you’ve used one of our products, send us photos of how you’ve incorporated it into your arts/crafts routine to subscriber@roylco.ca! We’d love to hear from you! 

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Little Fingers Big Art Celebrates 1st Birthday!!

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What better way to celebrate the 1st birthday of Little Fingers Big Art than to feature a craft post on how to make gorgeous birthday hats!? Complete with templates for the hats and accessories, this post marks our first year on the blogosphere and provides teachers and educators with a fun way to celebrate each students’ birthday in the upcoming school year. For this craft, I used our R15263 Tie Dye Paper to add a pop of color and style to the traditional birthday hat designs.

P.S. Don’t forget to VOTE FOR US at the Martha Stewart American Made contest!

Age: 5+

Duration: 15-20 minutes

You’ll Need:

• R15263 Tie Dye Paper

• Party Hat Template

• Party Hat Decoration Template

• Scissors

• Tape

• Scrapbooking Scissors

• Pencil

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Happy Birthday to our blog! I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by, but it’s just in time for the start of the next school year.

This year, we are striving to give you only the very best aspects of our online content–originality, quality, educational and social relevance, and inspiration for better and more exciting projects!

Today’s craft challenge is featured below the project instructions!

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First, assemble all your materials. You will need to grab the templates from the materials listed above. Print out your templates on 8½ x 11″ (21.5 x 28 cm) sheet of paper. Students will exercise plenty of fine motor skills as they cut out the various pieces for this craft!

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Start with your hat template. Place it onto a sheet of R15263 Tie Dye Paper and trace the template outline onto the sheet.

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Cut out the hat outline from the R15263 Tie Dye Paper.

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Roll the hat cutout into a cone shape. The two flat sides of the cutout should slightly overlap as you roll it. Tape the edges together.

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Next you will need to make the decorative edge for the hat. Use scalloped scrapbooking scissors to cut about ¾” (2 cm) up into the brim of the hat at intervals. Make the tabs wide or thin depending on your preference. Fold out each tab as you cut.

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This is what the brim of the hat should look like. It’s almost ready for celebrating!

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To make the decorative tassel at the top of the hat, cut out a strip of R15263 Tie Dye Paper, about 2 x 4″ (5 x 10 cm) wide.

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Roll the paper strip into a tight cylinder. Tape the bottom edge of the tassel to hold it in place.

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Slip the taped end of the tassel into the hat. You can secure it to the hat with an additional strip of tape. Cut several times straight into the top edge to about halfway down.

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Spread the cut portions apart and curl outwards using the blunt side of a scissor blade. The tassel adds a bit of a festive edge to the birthday hat. What other kinds of tassel ideas can you come up with?

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Print out the separate template for the birthday hat accessories. You can make butterflies, stars, hearts and more to decorate the hat! Each template comes in two different sizes to give your students the best customizing options available. Download it here: Party Hat Decoration Template!

Cut out the templates for the accessories. You’ll notice that the templates only come in halves. The dotted line indicates the exact middle of the whole shape. This makes it easier for students to cut the shapes out from the R15263 Tie Dye Paper.

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Fold a sheet of R15263 Tie Dye Paper in half. Place your templates’ dotted lines along the fold line. Trace the outlines onto the R15263 Tie Dye Paper.

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Cut the shapes out along the traced line. When you are finished, unfold the shapes to reveal your assortment of decorations for the birthday hat!

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Tape the back of each accessory onto the hat. Vary the angles that you place the accessories, or use a different sheet of the R15263 Tie Dye Paper to add different colors to the hat.

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Hole punch through opposite sides of the hat. Attach pipe cleaner to either end. When the hat is ready to be worn, secure the opposite ends of the pipe cleaners together to hold in place.

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CRAFT CHALLENGE:

Come up with your own accessories to add to your birthday hats! What are some interesting and unique ways to design your accessories? Replace the tassel at the top of the hat with materials such as streamers or beaded string! Send us photos of your work!

Don’t forget to VOTE FOR US at Martha Stewart’s American Made Contest!

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I recommend that every student make one birthday hat for her or himself at the beginning of the year. Keep the hats somewhere safe where they won’t get ruined. On the day that particular students are celebrating their birthdays, get them to wear their own hat throughout the day! Send us photos of your work to subscriber@roylco.ca for a chance to be featured in one of our upcoming posts! We’d love to hear your comments, questions or suggestions!

Little Fingers Big Art just received the Versatile Blogger Award!!

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Thank you so much to our huge fan, OntheUpCycle, who just recently bestowed us with the Versatile Blogger Award! Learn more about the award HERE. You can check out her amazing projects at ontheupcycle.wordpress.com!

In order to receive the reward, LittleFingersBigArt must participate in the rules required by the status of this award. They are as follows:

1. Display the Award Certificate on your blog. CHECK!

2. Announce your win with a post and thank the blogger who nominated you. CHECK!

3. Present 15 deserving bloggers with the award. SEE BELOW!

4. Link your nominees in the post and let them know of their nomination with a comment. CHECK!

5. Post 7 interesting things about yourself. CHECK!

I want to first honour several of our favorite bloggers with the Versatile Blogger Award. Please check out some of these incredible websites as they strive to give the best content and interact with their fellow bloggers with caring dedication.

Drumroll, please….

1. Squarehead Teachers

2. ArtwithMsK

3. CraftyStaci

4. PeaBea

5. Crafty Madre

6. Crafted in Carhartt

7. Franciful Arts

8. Make Something Mondays

9. Nerd in the Brain

10. Florence and Freddie

11. DaniellaJoe

12. Mummy of Many Talents

13. Craft and Repeat

14. 2 Craft and 2 Create

15. Crayon Box Chronicles

Now onto 7 interesting things about Little Fingers Big Art:

1. The creative folks at Roylco began this website exactly ONE YEAR ago! We’ve made it so far with the help of our favorite crafty fans who always make us feel like our work is worthwhile. Look forward to this week’s Birthday Post!! Check back for more details!

2. The content for Little Fingers Big Art is written in our Canadian office in Waterloo, Ontario. If you would like to get in touch with us about sponsoring for upcoming arts and crafts events, please drop us a line!

3. Here at Roylco, we have a huge manufacturing plant that assists us in keeping our products domestic, affordable and, above all, high quality.

4. This past year, Roylco hosted a 3 day Summer Art Camp for children ages 3-10. We had a blast with our little crafters who let their creativity shine with our versatile products. Stay tuned every Monday for our special Craft Spotlight posts, where we highlight the best products with detailed videos and high resolution photos of our Art Camp exploits! We’ll be updating with more information about Summer Art Camp 2014!

5. Roylco works closely with local organizations such as art galleries, museums and libraries, AND hosts workshops at Early Learning Centers across the province! To learn more about our support or to book a workshop with us, please send an email to subscriber@roylco.ca. You can also visit THIS PAGE for more information!

6. Our ideas are usually produced in our art room, where bundles of materials and supplies are kept for inspiring new products and crafty creations!

7. Finally, Little Fingers Big Art is climbing the ranks in the Martha Stewart American Made contest–please visit THIS page for more information on how to vote for us! We appreciate any votes we get.

Thanks again to On the Upcycle for her award. Happy blogging!

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Craft Spotlight: Bunting Flags

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Welcome to our first Craft Spotlight post! These posts will be published every Monday to showcase our favorite craft projects developed and manufactured domestically by Roylco! This week’s feature craft is R22046 Bunting Flags! 

Bunting Flags are cut from heavier paper and are great for painting on! Use regular tempera paint for coloring the flags. Welcome back your class with a fun decoration or get the entire class to work on one together!

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We wrote the words “2013 Summer Art Camp” across our Bunting Flags during the Roylco Art Camp, and got some of our young crafters to paint all the letters of the alphabet.

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Use the flags for making classroom decorations! Write one letter/number per Bunting Flag.

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Some of our crafters even drew scenes and combined several colors together. This is a great way to explore new ways of displaying students’ artwork! All of your students’ art can be hung up along a single wall like a bunting flag line!

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Show us your students’ artwork! Hang up your students’ painted Bunting Flag artwork and send us a photo of what it looks like in your classroom. We will publish a post on your work and show the rest of the arts and crafts education world! Send us an email to subscriber@roylco.ca!

Tear Art Still Life

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Our take on tear art uses simple materials: construction paper, crayons, rubbing plates and a bit of fine motor action! Find out how to create a gorgeous still life of a vase of summery flowers, or inspire some beachy fun with a colorful tropical fish portrait!

Age: 4+

Duration: 15-20 minutes

You’ll Need:

• R5871 Organic Rubbing Plates

• Construction paper in assorted colors

• Crayons

• Glue

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For this activity, I chose to use our R5871 Organic Rubbing Plates, but you could use any of our rubbing plates that create a uniform pattern throughout the rubbing area. Try some of these rubbing plates made especially from Roylco:

R5839 Texture Rubbing Plates

R5817 Animal Skins Rubbing Plates

R5841 Optical Illusion Rubbing Plates

R5870 Linear Rubbing Plates

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You will need to grab a reference photo to work from, such as the vase photo above. Look online for some ideas or browse through photography books for inspiration. Still life images are a great place to start for reference ideas. The subject is very clear to the viewer and usually shows something familiar, such as a vase with flowers or a basket of fruits. Once children have completed a still life image, they can try creating an action shot of an animal or a person with their tear art!

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Place one rubbing plate beneath one of each construction paper color. Rub with a similarly colored crayon (or choose contrasting colors in neon for interesting effects).

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You will only need to use half of the sheet. Cover the entire sheet of paper with the pattern if you plan to separate the pages to share between students.

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Exercise fine motor skills with crayon rubbings and tearing paper! Before you tear the construction paper, consider which colors will fill in certain parts of the illustration. For instance, the purple construction paper rubbing will serve as the vase in this image. Tear the construction paper into strips. Try not to use scissors, as that takes away from the “tear” in tear art! Keep the image in mind as you tear the paper. Since the vase is long, I tore the strips into longer sections. I tried to steer the the tear into a bowl shape near the bottom to mimic the roundness of the vase. Try it out!

Tip: Notice the glare on the sides of the vase. To achieve this effect, I used construction paper that wasn’t rubbed over. This took away from the texture while completing the look of the vase.

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Tear the rest of the pieces in larger chunks to make the flowers. Arrange the torn pieces together so that they overlap into circle-like shapes. This will appear like flowers. Tear longer pieces for the leaves, and paste them down first. Layer the flowers on top.

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I tore long strips of blue in varying shades to make the ocean background for the tropical fish portrait. I interspersed yellow and orange paper strips together to form the fish body. Tear two large pieces of red construction paper for the fins. Tear two smaller pieces of red construction paper and angle together to make the fish lips.

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Beautiful work! There’s loads of fun you can have with tear art! I would love to see what kinds of art you create with this technique. Just send me an email with your artwork attached and I’ll write up a post about it!

CRAFT CHALLENGE:

Make a tear-art self portrait! Grab a mirror or a photo of yourself and try to recreate your likeness with torn strips of patterned paper. How artistic can you make your portrait? Send us photos of your work!!

 

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Send all photos, comments or suggestions to subscriber@roylco.ca! Thanks for dropping by!