Art Project: Peace Tree

Here is a step-by-step look at the Peace Tree project from our after-club club, "Me + You = We?", that focused on tolerance and peace-making from a biblical perspective. Hands and trees (specifically planting trees) have been symbols of peace for generations, so I chose to combine them in this project. Also, I love the suggestion that peace grows organically. 

This is also great project if you have limited time. Or if you want something that is less messy, since the watercolor pencils give the effect of paint without actually having liquid paints.

For this project you"ll need:

- large, thick white paper
- colored construction or collage papers
- hand patterns (Mine are made out of foam rubber.)
- watercolor pencils (I used Stabilo Woodies.)
- regular pencils
- paint brushes 
- water
- scissors
- glue

Step 1: Draw a tree with the watercolor pencils.

Step 2: "Paint" the lines of the watercolor pencils with brushes and clear water. This produces a light, airy effect.

Step 3: Trace and cut out hands in different colors using the collage papers.

Step 4: Glue the hands / collage pieces onto the tree. 

When making my example above, I purposely drew a very simple tree, so that the children would use their own ideas rather than simply copying mine.

Here are some of the results of the student work:

The two children who worked on this picture together drew symbols of the Trinity onto their tree.

Wool Creations / Märchenwolle

I haven't posted much lately, because of being busy with end-of-the-year stuff at my elementary school. But I have managed to find some time to get in a couple of craft projects before Eastertide is over. 

When this little guy showed up on our nature table about halfway through Eastertide, my daughter was so excited!

I found it in this book at the library. One of my favorite pastimes is looking at old craft books there. It's such an easy project. You take a long piece of wool and make two knots. One for the head and one for the body. 

Another fun project from the book was a simple wet-felted butterfly which my kids and I did together. I must admit that I have always been a little leery of trying to make things out of wet felt, because it always sounded complicated. But the author explained that all you need to do here is gently rub wool that has been dampened with a little soap and warm water in your palm to stretch it. 

My test butterfly. I always test projects, before i do them
with kids to see where the pitfalls are.

My kids wanted to craft something with me on Mother's Day, so we gave it a try. The first thing we did was to make a butterfly pattern by folding a piece of paper and then drawing one half of the butterfly to make it asymmetrical. 

Then, we dampened and stretched the wool by rubbing it in the palm of our hands. I don't have pictures, because my hands were wet and I had to help the kids some. Here my son stretches the pattern over his wool to get ready to cut out the butterfly.

We then used paint to dye the wool.

Then, you take two long strips of wool and twist them to make the body and feelers. Here my son is sewing the body to the wings.

My daughter painting her butterfly purple.

You can see the seam on my test butterfly.

And these are our finished butterflies that will soon show up on our Pentecost / Whitsun table!

I'm linked to Keep Calm Crafting On at Frontier Dreams!


and The Magic Onions