Monday, June 15, 2009

Outer Space Scenes







Kindergarten is starting their Space unit so our first project is an Outer Space Scene.








Take a piece of poster board or heavy duty sketch paper. Take a scrap corner piece and cut a template of your planet. Here I used a different color so you can see it.






Attach temporarily to your paper with some masking tape.





Using black paint color in your outer space background. The scrap poster board protects the area where you will be painting in your planet. Great technique for kids.




Let the black paint dry but do not remove that scrap piece just yet. Splatter some white paint on your space for stars. With kids you can use a splatter box.





Remove the scrap piece and paint in your planet.







While your planet is drying working on the characters for your Space scene. Here I am cutting my astronaut out of corrugated cardboard for a bit of a 3D look. The kids will probably cut theirs out of paper.





Paint or color in with markers.






After the planet has dried I want to add some texture to it. For the look of craters I'm going to be using a few different materials,...bubble wrap, toilet paper roll, a straw, empty glue bottle, and a maybe a bottle lid.






First the bubble wrap.





Toilet paper roll...make sure you do some craters coming right off the end of the paper...more realistic looking.





the glue bottle and the straw.



Let dry.




For the astronaut face plate I am using some leftover mylar wrapping paper from Christmas...glue into place.



Add some fine details with a sharpie and a fine marker.


If you want to be able to change out your characters just use tape or Velcro circles to allow for easy changes. You can also laminate your background so you can keep on making changes for months to come.


That's it...give it a go..you can make your background larger with additional planets...you then can create lots of different characters to change around.

























I also wanted to show you my find from this weekend. The Calgary Herald runs a large secondhand book sale every year. I lucked out and found a complete set of "Family Creative Workshop" all 23 volumes plus index.

Now these books are from the early 70's but they are terrific. When I started out 20 years ago running art therapy groups at a local hospital I would take these books out constantly from the library...but due to their age they were eventually taken out of circulation.




I hope to show you lots of projects from these books....a few modifications to update them a bit but surprisingly a lot of the designs are back in fashion.

Here is some wire jewellery techniques.



Weaving projects.









Paper cutting designs.



I'll see you next time.
gail



6 comments:

  1. Very cute! I like your moon-man!

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  2. My mom has those books. I loved to look at them as a kid. I need to dig them out of her garage.

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  3. These are handy pictures which are made with the hands and they are really fantastic and amazing. As they are giving the feel of the outer space.

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  4. Hi There, I've done a few of your projects in my after school art class and I just love your ideas! The kids especially liked this space painting. We talked about NASA retiring the space shuttles and then had lots of fun making our space paintings! Many Thanks for posting your great projects, Michelle from Virginia.

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  5. I love this idea! I start my space unit tomorrow with my class and can't wait to try this out! Thank you so much for sharing! : )

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  6. We used a couple of your projects at my son's birthday party. He asked for an art theme. These space scenes turned out especially well. You can see a few of them here http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com/2013/08/easy-boy-art-birthday-party.html

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