We finally got to our Chihuly art project this week and it was worth the wait! I wanted to do this at the end of our unit study so that the kids could apply what they had learned.
We started with this matieral called DuraLar which feels like a heavy plastic. Once submerged into 200 degree water it is bendable and when removed from the water will hold its shape. It is really cool to work with. I precut the pieces into 5x7 sheets, they each got two. One they trimmed down to an oval shape. The other they cut in half and made two smaller oval shapes.
The kids really enjoyed helping to create their shapes. I would bend and submerge and then they would help move all the sides in the water. The end result:
Then the really fun part started, painting! Special glass paint was supposed to be used to give the pieces some transparent looks. I ordered four colors to work with which was plenty.
The kids were only to paint the back of the pieces to make them look shiny and glass like from the front. Then we used a Sharpie paint pen on the rims of the pieces to highlight the rim like Chihuly does.
This project came from Dick Blick and although the age was for junior high - high school, all the kids did fine with it. The main issue was the really hot water. It was a great project to wrap up our Chihuly study. The kids are pretty proud of their creations! I'm pretty proud of how much they have learned and that we got a big project done this week, yea!
2 comments:
That is way too cool! I love seeing what you are doing in school. I wish I was as creative & patient to step out of the 'school' box; maybe we'd get more out of schooling than all this textbook knowledge!
What a great project! I bet they are so proud!
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