Nativity Collage

Here is a Nativity Collage I came up with complete with templates.






















MATERIALS NEEDED:

- wc paper or heavy painting paper for background, mine was 9x12
- disk tempera paint, I used blue and black but I think a purple, magenta background would be nice
- salt
- oil pastel in white and yellow
- paper for painting parts of collage, I used this white construction paper, which really isn't construction paper but beautiful drawing paper.....my secret weapon to keep costs down
- acrylic, liquid tempera, or disk tempera for painting collage papers
- pencil crayons
- glue
- glitter glue
- TEMPLATE1, TEMPLATE 2, please feel free to use mine

PROCEDURE:

We are going to start with the background. I taped off my edges.

In the upper right corner I'm putting my star.  I traced a cutout star a I had and then coloured it in with yellow oil pastel.

I took a white pastel and drew circles radiating out from the star.  It's a little hard to see because it's white on white.

Now I paint the background using disk tempera. I add a little black to my blue at the top and work my way down with just blue.  I think a purple  and magenta sky would be great as well.

While my paint is wet i add a sprinkle of salt to look like more stars in the sky and add some texture to the background.

I have found that sea salt is working the best for this effect.  As long as the paint is wet when I apply it it works every time where as table salt is hit and miss.  Set aside to dry.

Now I need to paint my collage papers.  I make sure I have paper large enough to fit my templates.  You can find mine Here (template 1, template 2).

I paint each one a different colour.


I did green for Joseph but red or orange would also be great.

Traditional blue for Mary.  Did some swirling brushstrokes for interest.

and yellow/gold for Baby Jesus.

I also painted some scraps of paper a skin tone (whatever shade you wish) and a brown for Joseph's beard, a black would also be nice.







Set papers aside to dry.

Using the templates I trace the pattern on the back of my painted paper. (if you want the arrangement to look like mine make sure you trace the back of the pattern pieces)  Glue into place, Joseph's body should fit nicely into the corner of background.


I glued the face and beard of Joseph into position. I added a band for his head using a bit of the paper I painted for Baby Jesus.
With pencil crayons I drew the face and added some swirls to the beard.

I then glued on Mary's body, she overlaps Joseph a bit.  Added her face and another band for her head.

Baby Jesus is added into Mary';s arms.  I cut a white inner circle for around the baby's head out of regular white paper.

Using pencil crayons I drew on their faces and added a line or 2 for definition.

Finally I added some glitter glue on my star and radiation lines for that extra sparkle.  Glitter never seems to photograph well for me so the finished project has more impact then you can see here.

That's it.

More Christmas projects in the works so I will see you next time.


Gail