How To

One of the most challenging projects at our Elementary Art Camp was the Mosaic Vases. I had completed this project several years before and did not remember it being too hard. However the students still did an amazing job and had so much fun with this project and the vases turned out beautiful!

Keep reading to find out how we made these creative mosaic vases.

Step One: The first thing we had our campers do was draw out their design for their mosaic on a piece of scratch paper. We told them they could do anything they wanted. Some students did flowers, some did landscape scenes and one student even made a mosaic of our family dog, Rocko.

Step Two: Next, the campers picked out glass pieces and planned their design.

Step Three: The hard part – sticking different sizes of glass on round vase surfaces. This was the most challenging part of the whole project. We had glue that we normally used for mosaics but the pieces kept sliding around and falling off, our students were creative though and had fun making it work.

Step Four: Once the glue dried overnight the campers got messy the next morning and started putting grout around their glass pieces.

Step Five: After the grout set up for an hour or so the campers came back and polished all of their glass pieces and cleaned the grout off. The vases turned out so cool and looked even better with some flowers in them!

What a crazy few weeks it has been at the studio! We successfully had our first two camps and they were so much fun. The elementary students explored color through different mediums and our teens practiced their drawing and painting skills. We will be posting about different projects from camp throughout the summer, starting with one of my favorites: colorful animal collages.

The students got so into this project and had such a fun time making these crazy, colorful collages. I love this project because it combined fun with practicing artistic skills. Keep reading to see a step-by-step overview of how to complete this project as well as see the finished results!

Step One: Have the students scribble or create some kind of design using crayons or pastels on big sheets of paper. Then, using watercolor, tempura paint or dye from a tie-dye kit, have the students paint over their design to make bold and colorful paper. Make sure they know that everyone is sharing their paper creations.

Step Two: Let the students brainstorm about what kind of animal they want to create. We let the campers choose from birds, cats and dogs but a few students got creative and did wolves, bunnies and hamsters.

Step Three: Assemble the base of the collage once paper has dried. Have the students tear or cut up the colorful paper and post it on stiff cardboard or paper using Elmer’s glue.

Step Four: Using black acrylic paint, trace the outline of the animal’s eyes, noses and mouth on multimedia paper. The shape of these features changes based on the animal so the students were shown demonstrations and samples but also used reference photos. See examples of the different animals at the end of this post.

Step Five: Fill in the eyes using different shades of oil pastels. Trace the outline of the eye with the darkest shade and slowly blend to lighter colors to make the eye pop. Allow the students to color in the mouth and nose with pastels or acrylic paint as well.

Step Six: Paste the facial features on the collage using glue then have the students add finishing touches with acrylic paint such as whiskers, fur or ears. Fan brushes are great for this step.

Step Seven: Admire your work!