After reading so many books that featured Asian Elephants last week, we decided we needed to do an elephant art project. First I browsed on-line for elephant images, and found some beautiful hand-embroidered pillow shams and purses. A lot of times the elephants were silver thread or silver sequins, so we decided to use foil. I had seen a technique on pinterest that I wanted to adapt (see original post here), so we gathered our supplies: foil, glue, cardboard, paints. Here is our finished project. Didn’t my son do such a great job?
Step 1: Have children draw an elephant onto the cardboard using a black sharpie. Vivi asked me to help her with the ear:).
Step 2: Squeeze glue over your lines. My 7 year olds needed a little bit of help with this- this project is probably better for 8+.
Step 3: Wait until the glue is dry, then wrap up your cardboard with foil.
Step 4: Using your fingers, rub over your hidden drawing- and watch it magically appear! You will see that this elephant’s cardboard was corrugated, and the lines are coming through. My son’s cardboard was from the back of a notebook and is much smoother.
Final Step: Paint with tempura/acrylic/poster paints (not water colors or washable/finger paints). We first did this project with sharpies, but the colors were not as bold as we had hoped for. The kids just painted over the sharpies, and got the bright, vivid colors you see here:
I had some help from a teenage babysitter:
Love it!! Gorgeous works of art- clever project!
Thanks Sarah!
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Just stumbled upon your site! This is a great resource for homeschoolers or teachers! I just posted about this Asian elephant on Craft Gossip! The foil technique is really neat!!
http://lessonplans.craftgossip.com/?p=5809
I’m so glad you like it! I have lots of homeschooling friends, so I will pass on your web site:). I love everything to teach the kids about the world- if you have any other ideas let me know. It’s so fun to share!
Hi! I love your elephants! And thank you for linking back to my blog and our owls.
Absolutely!:) The owls were my inspiration- they remind me of “Mexican repujado”- the technique is totally different, but the look is the same. If you google it you can see the beautiful repujado. So beautiful!!!
Oh my gosh! I love this!! We are totally going to try it for a post I’m writing about Thailand for Mamasmiles. She has an Exploring Geography series!
Yay! So glad that you liked it:)- we had fun!
Loveeeeeeeeee this one. I had tried a similar technique for my Foil lizards.. http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/2012/10/lizard-craft-with-foil-marker-and-ceramic-paint.html