Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner--Seasonal Tissue Art

I subscribe to a very fun art blog via my Google Reader. It belongs to an art teacher based in Studio City, California. I can't even remember how I stumbled across this blog more than a year ago. But it is really great and it helps me be creative with art project ideas. It also shows projects for different age levels.

I took her post for an art journal and tissue paper leaf project and adapted it for Ella and Lily. We have a corner in our kitchen which really isn't used for anything and ever since we moved in, Ella sort of claimed it for hanging her art. We had the art easel in that corner for quite a while before it was relocated to the basement and in the spring I had an idea to hang hand-print butterflies there.

When I saw Kathy's post for the tissue paper leaves and read her description for creating them I thought this sounded like a terrific messy art project for the girls. And a very cool thing to hang in our corner for Fall. I even took it a step further than I was originally planning and made a tree to go in the corner so the leaves could "fall" from it.

This project, as the girls and I have done it, is multi-step and time consuming. But very fun and the end result was awesome!

What you need for FIRST PART of the project:
--Multi-color tissue paper squares
--Elmer's school glue
--water
--plastic cup (to mix clue and water)
--large brush (for applying glue mixture
--watercolor paper (either Crayola or artist-grade paper)

DIRECTIONS:
Mix equal parts water and glue together (I did 1/4 cup of each). Lay out newspaper on your work space and have kids wear old clothes or aprons. Apply a layer of glue mixture to entire sheet of paper. Lay tissue squares randomly down onto paper. Apply glue mixture to top of paper. Be careful with the top layer, if you get too much liquid or press too hard, the tissue paper can rip or fold on itself. I hung our wet creations on our basement clothes line overnight to dry. We made as many pages as the girls wanted to make. Lily ended up with four and Ella created six.





A couple of our wet finished pages.

Here are a few of our dry creations.

NOTES: I actually did most of that last step (applying the glue mixture on top) for the girls. The tissue paper can bleed which creates great art, but can stain clothing, fingers and furniture. So be careful with wet tissue paper. The girls had a fabulous time creating these masterpieces. I kept Step Two a secret and just told them we'd be cutting the paper into a certain shape. But didn't specify what, just to keep them intrigued until the next day. Also, I used the Crayola Watercolor paper purchased from Target, mostly because they didn't have thicker artist-grade watercolor paper there and I wanted to get the project started without having to make a trip to Michael's. The Crayola paper is thin and does curl up. But it worked perfect to give the paper a real 'leaf" effect. They sort of crinkled and felt like real dried leaves. If you're making tags or something else. I would consider thicker "real" watercolor paper.

What you will need for the SECOND PART of the project:
--stencils or cookie cutters in seasonal shapes
--pencil
--scissors
--brown marker
--PATIENCE

DIRECTIONS:
If your kids are old enough, let them draw the stencils on the BACK of the paper or even freehand if you want (draw on the back, then if they aren't cut directly on the lines, pencil lines won't be showing). I am too anal and wanted to make sure we maximized our tissue paper creations so I did this first step myself. Andrew actually came up with the brilliant idea to use leaf shaped cookie cutters to draw the leaves. I LOVED this idea. Draw all your shapes on the back and then cut them out. The girls drew in lines for the leaf veins with the brown marker.



I don't know how well you can see this from the photo. But it's the back of the paper with the stencil drawings on it. I also put an initial inside each leaf on the back so we would remember whose creation it was.

These are my finished leaves to use as examples for the girls.



They are ready to be taped to the wall or pasted onto whatever you want; cards you make, other art projects, use as tags for gifts, name tags for a get together, place cards for a large family dinner, infinite possibilities exist for this project!

NOTES: I used two pieces of poster board (1 in green, and 1 in gold--they didn't have brown) to create the tree. It took forever to draw all the shapes on the back of the pages and cut them out. The kids each lasted for about a page and a half of cutting. So I ended up cutting many of the leaves out myself and then just had them draw on the veins and hang them on the wall/window.



I plan to stretch this art project out for the entire season of fall. In October, we're going to make pumpkins, bats, spiders, and put an owl in our hole in the tree. I probably won't do all of this with the tissue paper art, but you could if you wanted too. I think in November, maybe we'll make some turkeys (maybe hand print turkeys) to throw on there.

Other ideas:
--Instead of a fall tree, you could create a Christmas tree. Hang a tree on the wall made out of poster board. Use Christmas shaped cookie cutters to cut out tissue paper shapes. Maybe use red and green tissue paper for the messy art part of it. You can hang your "ornaments" on the tree.

--Make a snowman out of poster board for your wall and have the kids make white and shades of blue tissue paper art. Cut snowflakes out of it and hang around the snowman. You could even add glitter to the top of the tissue art to make it "glisten" like snow does.

--You could use shades of red and pink and make tissue paper hearts for Valentine's.

--It's also fun, if you use the Crayola Watercolor paper, to hang your tissue paper shapes on a window. They act like stained glass when the light shines through the colors. So you wouldn't even have to go through the trouble of making a tree or whatever on your wall. You could just hang random shapes on a window.