Materials:
- Magazines
- Wooden Skewers
- Glue Sticks
- Glue Bottles
- Scissors
- Canvas (or hard another hard surface)
- Pencil
- Paint
- Paintbrushes
1. Design a simple image onto canvas.
2. Paint in design. Although the entire canvas will be covered with magazine reeds, a simple base coat of paint hides any peeking cracks and crevices left over from any magazine imperfections.
3. Start making magazine reeds in the colors you need! Good step-by-step directions can be seen here.
4. Trim down to size.
5. Glue down onto canvas.
* A couple pointers:
1. Gluing down the reeds in different directions for different parts of your painting really make areas stand out, as opposed to every single reed going in the same direction, i.e.. horizontally. Even when they are different colors, going in the same direction tend to make them blend together, losing the shape of the object you are trying to create.
2. When you are using a page of a certain color, but there happens to be a tiny border around the page, you need to trim that off. Rolling the reed with that little trim drastically changes the color of the reed (it will usually turned out striped), and then that reed is pretty much wasted.
These are really amazing. I have a couple of questions: what age / grade kids made them? (It seems like it could be pretty challenging for the fumble-fingered like me.). And how long did it take? Did the kids enjoy it or does all that rolling become tedious after a while? Very challenging, I'd think, but the results are spectacular!
ReplyDeleteI did these with my 7th graders... and I'm not going to lie... it took a LONG time!! I see them every other day and it took about 6 weeks!!! So 3 weeks if I saw them every day. (We might have had a few days missing with a couple assemblies and a couple days off, but still!). At the beginning, looking for colors was very time consuming. When I realized it was taking up most of class time, I literally spent every free minute I had and looked for colors for the kids and organized them in folders for them. That helped A LOT! If I ever do this again though... I'm definitely using smaller canvases- I used 8" x 10" for these.. I think even going down to like a 5" x 7" would make a big difference.
DeleteAs far as rolling, no one actually really complained. It's one of those things that once you get in the groove you just do it. Of course, you have the few that don't like doing anything that takes longer than 4 days, but for the most part the kids were into it- I think it's honestly because they just wanted to finish, haha. They would get really excited to see how much progress they'd do in a class, so they kept envisioning the end result. I even had a few take theirs home to do!
What great results your students had with this project! I have been thinking of doing this project with my Junior High students and this has inspired me to go ahead with it.
ReplyDeleteWow- wow- these are simply amazing--- well worth the time- kudos to your 7th graders! Thnx for all the step-by-step instructions :)
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ReplyDeleteThis exotic plant gets its name from the fact that the ancient Egyptians used its stems for making papyrus to write on. It grows in clumps and the smooth triangular stems can reach a height of 10ft/3m.
Cyperus Papyrus Cyperaceae Papyrus (Paper Reed) Plant