Ambrosia Creative

Here’s a simple project that is a craft and rudimentary lesson in color theory all wrapped in one.

What you’ll need:
*self-sealing laminating sheets or pouches
*tissue paper in cyan, magenta, and yellow
*a CD or DVD for tracing
*metal brads
*permanent marker

Step 1:
Using permanent marker, trace around the DVD/CD onto laminate sheet. Mark a dot in the center. Cut out circle, making sure to cut inside the line (so that marker line is cut off), and cut center dot out. Use the tip of your scissor, a craft knife, or hole punch if you have one long enough. Just make sure this center hole is large enough to accomodate your metal brad. Repeat all of Step 1 so you have two circles.

Step 2:
Make a small stack of all the colors of the tissue paper and cut out various shapes. These will eventually be layered on top of each other, so have multiples of each shape in all three colors (eg. a cloud in cyan, magenta, and yellow, etc).

Step 3:
Unpeel laminate circle. Set aside the non-sticky side for sealing later on, and lay the other part of the circle on work surface, sticky-side up. Carefully stick on tissue paper shapes. My younger son free-styled this part, placing shapes arbitrarily, whereas my older son created a pattern. The laminate is very sticky and unforgiving, so your child may need your steady hand for help! We made a couple mistakes, but built any wayward tissue pieces into our pattern.

Step 4:
When finished, seal up your circle with the non-sticky side you set aside earlier. Now lightly (I used just two small pieces) tape this circle down to your work surface, just to keep it steady and in place for the next step.

Step 5:
Expose the sticky side of your second circle, setting aside the non-sticky side for sealing later on. Sticky side up, lay the circle down on top of your previous circle. Remember making multiples of your shapes in Step 2? Carefully stick on same shapes to align with the shapes on the circle below. This is essentially a duplicate of the first circle, but use different tissue paper colors. Here’s where the lesson in color theory comes in; your child can see how adding a blue cloud on top of the yellow cloud makes it green. When all the shapes have been added in, seal up this circle with the non-sticky side you set aside earlier.

Kai’s two completed circles. Shapes don’t overlap exactly. That’s okay!

Step 6:
Remove your first circle from the tape and off your work surface. Use the metal brad to attach the two circles together and you’re done! Hold and spin the circles against a light-source to get a really neat kaleidoscope effect. Video (no sound) at the end of this post to show kaleidoscope in action.

I made my own ‘kaleidoscope’ using three layers of circles instead of just two. Each circle had stripes in a single color.

This is also my craft contribution this month to the always great Bloesem Kids. I would hasten to subscribe if you haven’t already done so!

8 Comments

Comments RSS

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail