I loved the gorgeous bird houses Patty Palmer had on her blog Deep Space Sparkle. So we created our own. We dyed our backgrounds with edicol ( food colouring). The Bird houses were painted with tempera paint block paint and finished them with sumi-e ink.
I alway love to make 3D artworks with the students and so came up with the idea of using a milk or juice cartons . I trimmed the top of and retaped them to create the bird house shape. I cut and glued a seperate roof onto the top of the carton . ( this takes up quite a bit of time as the students cant do this. I had the help of a high school student who is in work place training. Using a very thick white acrylic paint painted the cartons white. The students then painted and decorated them in bright tempera paints. . My next problem to solve was how to display them- I have come up with two ideas. Using very large Popsicle sticks ( more like tongue depressors) which are set in a plastic cup of plaster- a hole is cut in the bottom of the carton just big enough for the tongue depressor. They may require gluing using a hot melt glue gun to hold in place. This is suitable for small cartons. The large ones I have decided to hang for display with fishing line.
