"P is for Poppy" Project

Every year I come up with a new Poppy project for Remembrance Day.  This is the 2012 version.  The poppies can be made in three ways, using white streamers, paper towels, or coffee filters.























MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- wc paper or heavy sketch/drawing paper
- scraps of newspaper and/or book pages cut into squares and rectangles
- disk tempera paint
- eye dropper
- stapler
- white streamers, paper towels, and/or coffee filters
- little square or rectangle of corrugated cardboard
- text printed from computer or by hand
- a large letter "P" stamp (you could do this by hand/computer if you don't have a stamp)
- black pony beads or buttons
- tacky glue

PROCEDURE:

At school I prepped my artboards by taping down the background paper on one side and then had a small piece of wax paper on the other.

Take your scraps of newspaper or old book pages and glue a few pieces down on your wc paper.  This will add a layer of visual interest to our poppy composition.




Paint your background.  I chose a light blue made from the white and blue tempera disk.  I varied the colour with darker paint at the top and lighter colour at the bottom.

  I use large "one use" only brushes I buy at Walmart or the Hardware store.  They cost anywhere from $1.00-$2.00 so you can pick up several.  They are meant for applying sealer,  hence "one use" only but I have used them for years.

Set your background aside to dry.

Take your streamer and cut off a strip about 8 inches or so.  For a class, you will want to pre -cut your streamers.


I like using white streamers, I can paint them and get lots of variation in my colour, so no 2 poppies would be the same. 

Start to gather into a circle, making your poppy shape.

Then staple in the center.

You might be left with a square corner that doesn't look too poppy like so I round it off with the scissors.

With paper towels just cut a strip

and then form in the same way. 

Once you have made your poppies paint them.  Mix up some red, orangey red, and purpley red and dab on the colour.

Streamer and paper towel poppies must be painted after making up the flowers.  The streamer and paper towels are a bit delicate to paint on their own.  Make sure you dab when applying the paint as they are still quite fragile and you don't want holes.

Coffee filters can be painted ahead of time if you wish.

You then can cut a strip and form the flowers.

When the flowers are dry mix up some watery black paint.  Drop into the center of the flower with an eye dropper.  This gives the poppy that natural look.


You then can glue a black pony bead or button into the center.

Place your poppies on your dry background.


Using a pencil sketch out the stems.

Paint in the stems over your pencil lines.  I added a few leaves at the bottom.  Poppies tend not to have leaves near the flowers but in a mound near the ground.

Glue the poppies into place.

Take your little square or rectangle or cardboard and paint red.

When the paint has dried you can stamp a letter "P" on it or use a sharpie to hand letter.

Print out or write out the "is for poppy" text.

Paint with a little red paint.

Glue into place.

That's it.

 Those of you who joined me last Saturday at the Mini Potpourri made a little one of these on a file folder book using the white streamer sized poppies.



A file folder book on Remembrance Day would be an excellent project to try.  We made our stem from black paper strips from paper run thru the shredder.

Before I go I just want to show you this year's version of the Woven Bat project.  I changed it a bit.  We made the wings from paper we painted and then added some plastic wrap on top before it dried.  We smooshed it and left it on to form wrinkles.  (More details on this technique in this post).

The body paper was still painted and combed.  Instead of stringing the wings we used black paper that was run thru the shredder making strips.  We then glued these on the wings.

Grade 2 did an awesome job and we now have lots of bats in the hallway along with the Grade 1 Pumpkin Stacks.


See you next week everyone.