Category Archives: What We’re Making

What We’re Making: Mondrian-Inspired Art

August 29, 2017What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, markers, Mondrian, tape, watercolor

Who doesn’t love them some Mondrian! I’ve always loved the bold, primary colors and structure of his pieces.

Recently we did a Mondrian-inspired art project with our groups. We used markers and crayons with one group, and watercolors with another. The project can be adapted to each group’s interests and needs.

Start with a large piece of white paper and some blue painters tape. Use the painters tape to mark off different size rectangles all over your paper. If you cut the ends with scissors it will help keep your lines nicely crisp when we start adding color.

Once you’re satisfied with your grid layout, starting coloring in the rectangles! Use yellow, red, and blue to stay true to the Mondrian roots of the activity.

Once you’ve colored as many rectangles as you’d like, take a black marker and trace along the edges of the painters tape. Then peel off the painters tape.

With black marker, fill in the spaces left by the removed tape. A ruler will help you keep the lines straight.

And you’re done! You can use primary-colored tape around the edges of your art to form a border if you like, or leave it as it is.

Check out some of the pieces our participants made!

The world needs more bright, bold art in it; I hope this has inspired you to make some!

What We’re Making: Statue of Liberty Costumes and July 4th Rockets

August 13, 2017What We're Makingcostume, group art project, group craft, group craft project, july 4th, statue of liberty

Last month we did a couple of July 4th crafts with our groups, making red, white, and blue rockets and Statue of Liberty costumes. Our participants really love anything they can dress up in, so these were a real hit.

Before we get into the How-To, let’s get some tips from Kaye!

For the Statue of Liberty costumes our participants made their own crowns and torches, but we provided the green drape and tablet to complete the look.
In advance we cut out the crown shapes and drew in rectangles to simulate windows. If time for this craft is limited you can even glue down the cones in advance and the participants can just paint the outsides.
Because the paper cones are wax coated the paint beads up a bit on the waxed surface, which looks like oxidation. You can even talk about how metal oxidizes if your group would be interested in that!
We also pre-cut the paper arcs and strips for the torches, to save time.
For the July 4th rockets, we cut paper tubes into 6″ lengths ahead of time, but you could do any size.
Adding the netting and ribbon before gluing on the rocket’s cap worked best.

Let’s get to making!

For the Statue of Liberty crown, each participant gets a pre-cut paper crown and three paper cones. Have then paint these with a light green watercolor. Let dry.

Once dry, color in the pre-drawn windows with a black marker.

Run liquid glue along the bottom edges of the three paper cones, then glue onto the paper crown as shown:

Once the glue is dry, wrap the crown around your head and staple it in back to fit. You can even add a strip of paper as an extender if you need the crown to be bigger.

For the Statue of Liberty torch, take a pre-cut green paper arc and roll it into a cone shape. Staple the edge to hold this shape.

On a long strip of green paper create a design for the top of your torch. Then wrap it around the top of your paper cone and staple it in place.

Create flames by gluing red, yellow, and orange strips of paper (tissue paper works well for this) to the inside edge of your torch.

Finally, don the provided drape and grab the tablet and strike your best Statue of Liberty pose!

We made the July 4th rockets during the times that the watercolor and glue needed to dry on our Statue of Liberty costumes. Here’s how we made them:

Take a paper tube and decorate it with colored tape.

Using clear tape, attached ribbons and strips of netting to the inside of one end of the tube. These will be the streamers at the end of your rocket to show it’s in flight.

Next, take a pre-cut paper disk (just a paper circle with a slit cut half-way into it) and fold it into a slight cone shape. Staple this in place to hold its shape.

Run a bead of glue along the un-adorned end of the paper tube. Set the paper cone on top and press gently so the glue adheres.

Once the glue is dry, poke one end of an ornament hanger through the cone. Use it to hang up your rocket like it’s flying!

Here’s to celebrating Lady Liberty!

What We’re Making: Hot Air Balloons

July 29, 2017What We're Makingcotton balls, drawing, group art project, group craft, group craft project, hot air balloon

Another 3-dimensional craft! These hot air balloons are such a fun group activity since they involve drawing, spatial reasoning, and those fun, tactile, cotton-ball clouds.

If you’re doing this with a group, you’ll probably want to get the hot air balloons and foam cut out ahead of time. To prep:

Trace your hot air balloon shapes onto posterboard and cut them out, two for each participant.
Each participant will get one shape that’s cut from the top down, and another shape that’s cut from the bottom up (see pictures below). When cutting the slits, cut slightly longer than half way in each direction. This will simplify assembly.
Then take floral foam (about 1″ thick) and cut it into circles with a cleaned out can, biscuit-cutter, or round cookie cutter.

Now you’re ready to bring on the participants!

First, instruct them to draw on both sides of both of their balloon cut outs. It’ll all be visible once it’s assembled because it’s 3-D!

Then, show them how to line up the slits so that the shapes stand up. You can get into how they’re standing perpendicular to each other, or at right angles to each other if you like.

Next, holding the bottom of the balloon firmly, push it into the floral foam circle. Since floral foam is much softer than Styrofoam they should go right in. If not you may need to use a pen, scissors, or a craft knife to score the foam first.

Now ask the participants to gently pull apart some cotton balls to make them look more like clouds. Have them use liquid glue (glue sticks don’t really work for this) to attach the cotton to the floral foam.

And that’s it! What a whimsical piece, right? Our participants really liked to imagine the balloons are flying; ask them where they’re flying to!

Happy making!

What We’re Making: Mexican Star Ornaments

June 28, 2017What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, paper, paper craft

Another of our art projects last month was making Mexican Star Ornaments. This is a neat combination of a coloring craft and a paper-folding craft, so make sure to leave time after all the coloring is done to give instructions on the folding and assembling part.

But first, some tips from our fearless leader, Kaye!

I found a template for a six-pointed 3-D star, then added the interior star and tabs to fold under at the tips. The tabs especially help to keep the 3-D shape once everything is assembled.
I punched a small hole in one tip and added a loop of thread to act as a hanger ahead of time. I also folded under the tabs. You wouldn’t need to do this for some groups. Just know your peeps.
I printed the stars onto cardstock, so we did the coloring portion with colored pencils, because markers can weaken the paper.
The streamers are strips of plastic tablecover. You could also use strips of tissue paper, ribbon, or really anything colorful and flow-y you can think of!

Here’s the star template itself:

Once you’ve printed out your star onto cardstock, let’s get to making!

First, cut out the star template from the cardstock. Punch a hole in one tip of the star and add the loop of thread that will be the ornament’s hanger.

Now the hard part (ha, not really!): pick what colors to use! Color your star however you choose, pastel, neon, the colors of your room, whatever you like!

Once you’ve finished coloring, it’s time to start folding.

Start by folding and then unfolding along all of the dotted lines. After you’ve pre-folded everything your star should be flat on the table again.

Now start folding the long lines up toward you, and the short lines down away from you. The long lines will poke up like mountains, and the short lines will point down like valleys.

Next, flip your star over. Glue little streamers to each tip of the star (except the one that has the thread loop for a hanger already).

For the final touch, fold those flaps on the edges back over the tip to encase the streamer. Where the flaps overlap glue them together. This will help the star to keep its 3-D shape.

Now your star ornament is done and ready to hang! I like how Kaye has hers in a window, it looks so festival with all of the sunlight.

And here are our fellow artists in action!

Wouldn’t a few of these strung together in a garland look so neat? You could alternate them with your papel picado!

Happy creating everyone!

What We’re Making: Papel Picado

June 11, 2017What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, paper, paper craft

Last month we did a couple of art projects from Mexico for Cinco de Mayo. One of them was the traditional papel picado, or “pierced paper”. I love the delicate designs you can make with this technique.

Here are some tips from Kaye!

I folded the tissue paper and pinking sheared its bottom edge so participants would know where the top was.
I cut cardboard templates for various shapes and, with colored marker, marked the edge that runs along the paper’s fold line. Since the templates are 1/2 the finished shape, I labeled each one with its shape: valentine, star, 4-point star, oval, diamond, etc.
I provided pencils and light-colored pencils for tracing, because markers seep through tissue paper. The light-colored pencils work best on the dark-colored tissue paper.

Now let’s get to making!

Take your already fan-folded paper and choose what shapes you’d like to put on it, and where you’d like those shapes to go:

Trace around the shape templates with a pencil. Trace lightly, we don’t want to tear the paper!

Take your scissors and cut out the traced shapes.

Then unfold the paper to reveal the pattern of shapes!

(You can see in the above picture that, in addition to folding the papers into the fan-fold ahead of time, Kaye also added a top flap to aid in the next step.)

Now we just need to add a cord you so can hang your creation! Lift up the top flap on the paper and run a glue stick along the fold line.

Lay a piece of string or cord along the line of glue, fold the top flap back down over the cord, and press firmly to make sure everything sticks where it should!

And now you’re done! Hang up your papel picado in a window to show it off!

What shapes would you put on your papel picado? I like all of the star options myself.

Happy creating, everyone!

What We’re Making: Spring Collages

May 5, 2017Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makingcoffee filter, collage, group art project, group craft, group craft project, paper, paper craft, Spring

We’ve had a delightfully long spring here in Austin this year; temperatures have been mostly in the mid-80s so far, instead of already being in the high-90s like normal! It’s the little things in life.

Recently we made spring flower collages with our groups, using all sort of fun colors and materials. The main event, though, was using coffee filters to make flowers: the porous nature of the filter paper means that markers make a nice watercolor effect on them.

First up for this craft, here are some tips from Kaye!

I prepped the coffee filters by cutting them from the rim into the center so they fan out like flower petals. If your group has enough time and fine-motor skills they could do this step themselves.
You can use any markers to color the coffee filter flowers, but to get the perfect circles you see in our pictures we used bingo markers (sometimes called bingo daubers). They’re just markers with a flat top used for marking bingo-cards, or in our case, for creating a lovely polka dot effect!

Let’s get to making!

Things you’ll need:

White and green construction paper
Coffee filters
Cupcake liners
Candy liners (same as the cupcake liner but smaller, like for peanut butter cups)
Crayons
Markers and/or bingo markers
Scissors
Glue sticks
Green ribbons, strips of construction paper, or rickrack

You’ll want to decorate your main, coffee filter flower first; the dye from the markers makes them pretty flimsy, so we’ll need to give them time to dry before we glue them onto our final collage.

Here’s the design Kaye made on hers:

Next, create another flower or two with the cupcake liners and candy liners. You can color on them, cut the edges of the liners into a new petal shape… You can even layer them to create the look of a daffodil!

Once you’ve made all the blooms you want, we can start on our sky. Taking an unwrapped blue crayon (or, hey, whatever color you want, it’s your sky!), rub the crayon gently over the surface of the paper. You should get a nice textured effect from the paper.

Then, take another sheet of paper (or scrap paper) and tear it up into your clouds! Any shape you like! Glue them onto your sky with a glue stick.

Hopefully your flowers are dry and ready to put on the collage now. Using the glue stick, glue the flowers where you’d like them on your sky.

(Hint: If you use glue only on the center of the flowers, the petals will stay loose and have a little movement to them, like they’re blowing in a nice breeze.)

Then give each flower a green stem! You could draw this with marker, use a green ribbon or rickrack, or use a strip of green construction paper.

Finally, let’s add some green grass! Cut a strip of green construction paper so that one edge looks like fringe; run your finger along the fringe gently to sort of tousle the grass. Glue the uncut edge to the bottom of your sky.

Your collage is complete! You can also draw on some bugs if you’d like, or add your name to your masterpiece for full artistic flair.

Here’s a sample of the great collages our groups made:

What have you been making this spring? We’d love to hear other fun group art project ideas in the comments, or send us a message on Facebook!

What We’re Making: St. Patrick’s Day Weavings

April 3, 2017Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, paper, paper craft, shamrock, St. Patrick's Day, weaving

Here at A Spacious Place we like group art projects of all kinds. This one is especially good for groups that benefit from the calming, repetitive, fine motor coordination of weaving.

We did these in the colors of the Irish flag to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and added some shamrocks for additional flair. But you could do these in any colors for any holiday, or maybe in your school colors, or really in any color combo you’d like!

Here are Kaye’s notes to help you get set up:

To prep the materials, use an Exacto knife to cut 2″ slits horizontally across 12 x 18″ green construction paper. Then, using a paper cutter, cut 2″ strips (vertically) from 9 x 12″ white and orange paper.
With a heart-shaped hole punch, I cut hearts from green-patterned scrapbook paper. With the tips turned inward, 3 hearts make a shamrock and 4 a four-leaf clover.

Let’s get to making!

With you green paper on the table horizontally, take a strip of white or orange paper and begin weaving it through the green paper, alternating over-and-under:

Add the next strip weaving the opposite pattern, under-and-over:

Keep adding strips in white and orange until you’ve filled up the green paper:

To secure your paper strips in place, glue the ends down with a glue stick:

Now it’s time to decorate! Take three or four of the green hearts and fold them in half for a 3-D effect:

Place the hearts on the white and orange squares of your weaving. Glue them with the bottom of the hearts pointed inward to make a shamrock or four-leaf clover!

Then add the stems with a green marker:

Your weaving is ready to display for the holiday!

What crafts did you do to decorate for St. Patrick’s Day? We’d love to hear, leave a comment below!

What We’re Making: Lunch Bag Turkeys

December 2, 2016Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, lunch bag craft, paper craft, Thanksgiving, turkey

A Happy Belated Thanksgiving to you all!

We made these fun turkeys out of brown paper lunch bags a few weeks ago. They’re fun to make and then they can sit on a shelf or mantle bringing holiday cheer throughout the Thanksgiving season.

Here’s how to make them!

Start with a brown paper lunch bag and some newspaper. Stuff the newspaper into the bag.

Twist the bag shut and secure it with a piece of chenille stem (you can cut them in half or even thirds to make the most of your resources).

With scissors, cut the bag into strips from the edge to to the stem.

Color your turkey head with colored pencils or markers. Make sure to get the beak and waddle, and glue on some fun googly eyes.

Glue the turkey head to the bottom of bag, like so:

Glue some colorful tail feathers to the strips at the other end of the bag.

Your turkey is almost done now! It just needs legs!

Accordion fold two strips of red paper, then glue on some turkey claws to the ends of the strips.

Glue the end opposite the claws to the underside of the bag, under the turkey head.

Now your turkey is ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with you!

Here’s to the Thanksgiving spirit lasting all year long!

What We’re Making: Paper Plate Owls

November 25, 2016Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, owl, paper craft, paper plate

We made owls out of paper plates the other day, and look how fun and fall-like they turned out!

Some tips from Kaye:

Tracing the fold lines on the plate’s back helped our folks with the logistics of the process.
I sorted the eyes, eye pupils, beaks, and talons (we provided a choice of color in all) into egg-carton sections for transport.
A stapler helped hold the folds in place for easier coloring.
In a room with a blank wall, it would be fun to craft a huge tree from brown wrapping paper and set the owls to roost.

Here’s the full how-to!

Draw the following fold-lines on the paper plates:

In the center of the plate draw rows of scalloped lines to be the owls chest feathers:

Fold in the sides along the lines.

Color the wing feathers:

Fold down the top part of the plate. This will be the owl’s head. Staple it to keep it in place.

Color the owl’s head. You could make it match the wing feathers, or make it stand out.

Make a pair of eyes for your owl by gluing small circles inside large ones.

Glue the eyes onto the owl’s head. Also glue on a beak.

Give your owl some talons.

And you’re finished! What is your owl’s name?

What We’re Making: Finger Puppets

November 25, 2016Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makingfinger puppets, group art project, group craft, group craft project, poster board, puppets

Our participants love making anything that transforms them; hats, masks, or these fun finger puppets are always winners.

These are especially great because they are so simple to prepare!

From some poster board, cut out an oval and 2 circles for finger holes–size these holes to the participants’ hands. To cut out the small holes, pierce the poster board with an Exact-o knife, then use fingernail-sized scissors to finish the job. (This step may be best to do ahead, as the small scissors can be a little hard to maneuver.)

Then have the participants draw on their finger puppet to bring it to life!

You can also add other poster board decorations to the edges of the oval for a different effect. For that you may want to provide templates for additions that might be challenging to draw (hats, wings, etc.), that way, participants have the option of tracing and cutting, or going rogue and doing whatever makes them grin.

Didn’t they make some neat puppets!?

Here’s to transformative art!

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Category Archives: What We’re Making