Easter Art

Yesterday we made the bead and clay crosses I mentioned we might make. Then we combined that idea with that artist woman's guest post project over at alpha+mom (wow! that's a lotta links in one sentence!). Here are the results:

Making the dough and colouring it with paint.

Our lovely balls of clay:

Easy-peasy salt dough:

4c. flour

1 c. salt

2 c. warm water

kneaded together with acrylic paints (and extra flour)

* At the end, bake everything @ 250 degrees for 2-3 hours.

We don't have a cross cookie cutter, so we shaped them ourselves with a knife. I kinda made my 3 year-old's cross too small! But he meticulously covered it in beads :)

The completed crosses (before ribbons). I ended up spraying them with an acrylic clear coat rather than having the children cover them in ModPodge, as I think the original instructions advised. I decided it was easier and less disruptive of loose beads.

These are the jars we decorated with the clay. Everyone liked the beads so much that we mostly beaded these instead of shaping clay to make designs. I did a bit of shaping on mine -- which is the one with the butterfly and flower. I like how the salt in the clay makes it shimmer!

Now I remember why we don't do art every week -- it's a lot of work! Every time we do something like this I have a renewed respect for classroom art teachers!

Just for fun, I linked this post at: