DIY Recycled 3D Spring Collage 🌷
April Showers Bring May Flowers
Spring is in the air and the flowers will be blooming outside soon! In the meantime, bring spring inside with this fun at-home craft that can be adapted for young or more advanced artists.
This sensory collage project combines painting and collage-making with texture exploration, allowing young artists to experiment with different materials and techniques. Using recycled paper, pastel tempera paints, and everyday objects like bubble wrap and cardboard, artists will create their own colorful 3D masterpieces.
We’ve included all the steps and materials you’ll need below. Follow along to try it out at home.
Materials:
Recycled paper (pages from magazines or catalogs, newspaper, or junk mail and fliers)
Tempera paint in a few pastel colors
No-spill paint cups or a palette
Paint brushes
Materials for adding texture to your painting: bubble wrap and corrugated cardboard pieces from old packaging, fork, comb
Glue sticks
Scissors
Patterned washi tapes
Optional: liquid glue or hot glue
Let’s get started!
Steps
Part 1: Sensory Painting Fun!
1. Invite artists to begin by decorating paper with tempera paint. Try to stick to one or two colors per page that you can use to mix or create an ombre effect.
2. Artists can use their fingers or the brush to add texture to the surface, or try other tools to spread or remove paint, such as corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, forks, or combs.
3. Set your painted papers aside to dry.
Part 2: Collage!
1. Invite your artists to tear or cut some of your dry painted papers into smaller shapes.
2. Next, arrange the shapes on your background paper to plan the **composition**. Do you want to create a spring scene such as flowers in a garden or a green landscape?
3. Use a glue stick to secure collage paper on the background.
4. You can add extra details to your artwork using patterned washi tape.
5. Challenge older artists to fold their collage pieces after they cut a shape. By rolling the paper or doing an accordion fold, you can add an interesting 3D element to your artwork!
6. Artists may need to use liquid glue or get help with hot glue to secure 3D paper shapes to their collage.
