Aug 18, 2014

Busy Hands: Sandpaper Art

Even though this needed some mama guidance, the kids really had fun with all the stages of this project.
Especially the 'reveal' at the end!

Sandpaper Art!

What you need:
 - medium grain sandpaper (too fine and you won't see the texture... too coarse and it will eat up your crayons)
 - pencil
 - wax crayons
 - scissors
 - paper
 - clean towels
 - iron
(Sorry, got way too excited about this project I guess to actually take a photo of all the supplies!)... lol


What you do:

First, we used the pencil to draw some shapes on to the sandpaper. I put a few basic shapes down for my toddler since most of her stuff is still linear and wouldn't work very well for cut outs. My 9 year old was left to his own devices on this step.




Next was too outline with a crayon (yeah... I did this for her too... whatcha gonna do about it?!)




Now it was all her coloring in the shapes. It really didn't matter if she went out of the lines since we would be cutting the shapes out anyway later.

Quick note: The shapes should be big and bold. Anything thin will be difficult to cut out and iron later. Same goes for shapes with cut outs on the inside. Not impossible, but a little more work.




This is where you will realize if your sandpaper is too think... the crayons will last about three strokes before they disintegrate into the paper.




My son's creation... when all else fails... print your name!




When everything is colored in it's time to cut the shapes out of the sandpaper. At this point the kids were at two different stages and the iron was already on, so I didn't have time for a quick pic of the cut outs.

I ironed on the kitchen counter for this craft. The ironing board is in the deep dark recesses of the garage and I refuse to get it out when my husband isn't home to kill critters that have made it their home. Yuck!
I laid a clean towel on the counter and a clean piece of paper on the towel. This paper is what the final design shows up on. Doesn't necessarily have to be white. My daughter opted for yellow paper and that worked out great too.




On that goes the sandpaper cutouts... upside down. When you iron it, the wax will melt and transfer onto the paper, so you want it facing the paper, not facing the top towel ;)




Now I covered with a double layer of a clean towel...




...and ironed. I used the highest setting and steamed it too once in a while.




We ironed each paper for about a minute or so. You can tell by a quick check if it is working and done...




Yay!




Some of the designs from my son's paper...
He ironed his own stuff! (Now I just need to train him to think that ironing shirts and pants is a craft too!)




Another note: If you are writing names, etc. you need to sketch it as a mirror image since you will be turning it around to iron it. When you turn it over it will come out the right way round. Learned this one through trial and error. Mostly error! 

Happy Creating!
:)


No comments:

Post a Comment