and today we were mixed media artists . . .

This project required a time commitment of two days and a fair amount of Elmer's glue.  Besides the Elmer's you need:  heavy tagboard, wallpaper sample books, scraps of fabric, and tissue paper.  Because we were re-using and recycling things that were being thrown out this was a great project to touch on that subject.  I explained to the children that the fabric scraps were left-over from a project I did at home, the wallpaper books were being thrown away by a store in town, and I gathered the tissue paper from Christmas gifts.

On Day 1, I gave the children tagboard cut-outs of vases.  Normally, I'd let them cut-out their own vases or at the very least, trace them.  This time I was under a time crunch so I pre-cut the vases.  We mixed equal parts Elmer's glue and water and painted the vases with glue.  The children decorated the vases with fabric scraps and then applied a top coat of the glue/water mixture.

On Day 2, we made a background on a large sheet of tagboard.  Once again, we covered the paper with glue/water.  This time the children decorated it with torn tissue paper.  They put an additional coat of glue/water over the tissue before attaching their vases and some flowers cut from the wallpaper books.

I am in love with the way these turned out :)