Easy, affordable ornaments/ hanging sculptures

 I have been making ornaments with my students in the art gallery program and the after school program. I even used the first one as a station project when substitute teaching for art. These are quick easy and affordable.

primary color scheme ornament

 The first one is a paper ornament. Any paper will do but card stock will work the best .You could also recycle thin card board boxes from tissue or cereal(already patterned on one side, less coloring).  These are two same size circles sliced in half and and the slices slide together. I traced the bottom of a cup for these ones. I use one piece of  scotch tape where the pieces connect then pop it back put 1 hole punch at the top of the bottom circle which has the slit facing upward to hang the ornament. If you are making a couple tracing the circles is easy enough. For use in the classroom I recommend tracing a sheet of circles drawing the slits and using the copier to run sheets of circles and then cut them in groups of twos.

Secondary color scheme ornament

Step 1 Trace circles
Step 2 Cut out circles
Step 3 Color front and back of circles with markers, crayons. pencils etc.
 Step 4 Slide slits together
Step 5 Hole punch the top of the bottom circle( the one with the slits facing up)
Step 6  Tie yarn or ribbon through the hole
Step 7 Secure center circles with small piece of clear scotch tape or white glue where they meet up.




 Card board tube ornaments

Cardboard tube ornament painted with acrylics

 Thinner cut version of ornament

 These project uses card board tubes from paper towel or toilet paper.  You can choose to cut the tube into  thicker pieces 1 inch to 2 or thin1/2 inch pieces.  I have included pictures of a few finished ones to give you some ideas.


Step1   Choose to make an ornament with 3,4,5 or 6 pieces.

Three piece ornament

Five piece ornament

 

Six piece ornament

Step 2  Press the tube flat to make the cutting easier, cut the piece of the tube so they are all the same size.
Step3   Hole punch the pieces at one end in the middle of the piece.
Step 4  Decorate the cardboard pieces with paint, markers etc.
Step 5   Thread yarn or ribbon through the holes and tie them tight together so they pop out.
Step 6  Choose the top the the ornament and tie a loop of yarn or ribbon through it to hang it from.

The thing I like about these is that they fast, easy and can be personalized any way you want. These do not have to be a "holiday project." They are good for gifts, party favors, or for teaching: color schemes, 3d vs 2d,spatial reasoning, numbers and counting, sculptural elements and positive and negative space.

Favorite childrens mixed media pieces

In the last few years I have taught at the museum. I find and collect low cost gadgets and gizmo's to use for projects with the kids. Reusing junk that would otherwise be discarded is one of my favorite things to do. I am a huge fan of the Dollar stores, Thrift Stores, garage sales , the Recycle shop .(http://www.childcarecouncil.com/childcarecouncil146.phpon) on Blossom is awesome if you have never checked that out you really need to. They will give you a whole bag of stuff for just 5.00. I love what the kids come up with when they use their imaginations and the stories they tell as they create stuff are too good to pass up.

I have had several small group classes of 6-8 year old for Saturday and summer morning classes and we created some fabulous mixed media projects.

We created dioramas, artists books, face sculptures, outer space pieces.

For the dioramas I combined some simple childhood materials and idea. Those traditional wooden clothespins do make great dolls. We used paint,lots of hot glue,construction paper, markers, toothpicks small wooden skewers, model magic clay fabric and pipe cleaner to create these.

Two girls who worked together decided to both create beach scenes and created a overhang to combine the two in class so they could have their clothespin people interact with each other.
One of the girls realized that if she used the smaller mini clothespins she could create "babies" for her "grownup" clothespins.

For this diorama the student created a cave scene. We made stalagtites from aluminium foil rocks from model magic and other materials. I wish i had pictures of the rock band one kid made. We created a stool from sticks and a twisting medicine bottle cap. We sawed off the "legs" of the clothespin and made the drummer spin on his stool. These were all great fun. It did help that it was a small group because they was a lot of hot gluing for me to do.


The face sculptures were another huge success.... we used cardboard, model magic,paint and paper mache, hot glue, Elmer's, construction paper, pipe cleaners, raffia and, marbles for the eyes. A friend of mine donated a lot of broken old eye glasses from the eye glass store she worked at too.


The artists books we created in two ways.

The first was as altered books. A found a package of children's boards books at the dollar store that the paper torn off of easily. we removed the images and text then used a different paint treatment on each page. We created print blocks using Styrofoam tray pieces, we used bingo markers, we dipped Lego's into paint and stamped with them. We cut cardboard that had been spray painted gold and glued that into sections. I gave students the option to drill holes into their pages and put different "Funky" yarns through them.















The second way was creating an accordion fold book then using various printing techniques and paint to create images to put into the pages of ours books.

Alex's print book