Easy Texture Collage Project

We made a really easy texture collage project using lots of different materials- papers, cardboard, cork, burlap, etc, all in muted colors. Beckett, Fen and I each made one, so it’s a fun and quick project to make together. With snacks, of course.

Some of the materials we bought at Michael’s, some were found in various bins of stuff at home. It’s fun to launch a big old search around your house for different textures you can use. We used cork, burlap, and corrugated ‘papers’, (all from the scrapbooking section at Michael’s), twine, coffee filters, and crumpled and inked paper. This paper was left over from the Amate art project we did for What Do We Do All Day?

Materials

• Textured papers and materials
• Boards (we used 2 cut pine boards and 1 actual wood art panel)
• Glue – we love Aleene’s

Instructions:

Cut up your textures into smaller shapes so you can easily grab what looks good to you and glue it on your surface. We used mostly geometric shapes, but you can go all wiggly and wavy and loose if you’d like.

Try to have a combination of some larger and some smaller shapes for your kids. Of course, this is great cutting practice for younger kids, and older kids will be adept at cutting their own shapes.

Glue them on the surface, urging them to cover the entire surface. This is a great exercise in paying attention to composition. A well-composed image will look ‘balanced’, and it’s hard to explain this concept to kids, but they will naturally decide what shapes they think look good, and where.

Abstract projects like this are perfect for focusing on composition and texture, and these are concepts they will use in all their art-making.

Originally, I intended to have the kids gesso over the entire surface and paint it, but we liked the way these looked as they were. I think next time we’ll try some painted texture collages as an extra, exploratory step…. oooooh fun!

I encourage you to browse around your local art/craft store, but here are some material links for you from Amazon for quick ordering if you so desire…