Painted Sea Shells
Painting small objects is both messy and therapeutic. So worth it! I break out the acrylic paint and tempera cakes for this quick project during my Discover Art art camp. At first the kids are thrown off because we’re painting shells but then the awesomeness sinks in and they go at it with gusto!
Materials:
+ small squares of cardboard
+ shells
+ tempera cakes
+ acrylic paints
+ small plastic cups with lids
+ paint brushes, water buckets
The set up is easy: work tables were set up like normal with paper and water buckets, the back table has a tub with all the shells and the acrylic paints in plastic cups. I do this to control the amount of paint that's out there, eliminate waste, and keep it easy for the kids to move around with.
My directions were simple: choose one shell at a time (so that all the 'good' ones aren't taken immediately) and, with one color at a time, paint them. They had complete control over how many, which shells, and which colors they used.
While the shells were drying and centers were happening I had kids come over to paint their cardboard. My first go around at this project we didn't paint the cardboard. They looked nice but weren't exactly what I imagined. The second time I set up a tray of bright tempera cakes for the tiny humans to use and called a few over at a time. Painting on cardboard with our tempera cakes gave a look similar to watercolor which was even better than I imagined. Mental note: paint on cardboard with tempera cakes more often!
The third time I offered this lesson we added glitter glue. THAT was the magic!
Once those were dry we used white glue to arrange them on the backgrounds. I even started throwing in some faux gems because *sparkle*!
I give my students a lot of color choices but I'd love to see this project in a limited palette. The pop of color from acrylic paints is a nice change from the look of watered-down liquid watercolor. Happy making!
