color blending and shrinky dinks

Any project that involves Shrinky Dinks is a hit.

What are Shrinky Dinks? A paper that when put in the oven shrinks down to half it's size!

The holy grail of capturing kids excitement in the art studio as far as I'm concerned. I can't blame them, I loved them when I was little too.

I found this project idea on Dick Blick's website under their lesson plans. I had held onto it for quite awhile and decided to give it a try with an elementary class full of boys.

I started the project by showing them several artist from the Impressionist movement, focusing in on optical blending and asking them to pay attention on how the artists placed colors close together to create their art.

Then I had them each pick a photo from the reference file to place under their Shrinky Dink paper and give it a try with markers, working hard to place two colors next to each other instead of blending them together.

Shipwreck, 9 year old

What's great is that while large, they can see the colors next to each other but then when it has been shrunk, they can really grasp the concept of the blending as the colors come together when very small.

ballerina, 7 year old

But I am not kidding myself here, the highlight of the night was peeking into the oven while these papers baked. They bubble and curl before straightening back out at a much smaller size....or in the case of one poor child, just curl.

Make sure they are doing their artwork on the correct side of the paper as directed by the instructions....it matters.  Art teacher fail but luckily the child was quite easygoing and open to creating another artwork to try again. Needless to say, we made sure we followed the directions to the "t" the next time.

shark, 8 year old

When they were baked, I let the kids take a gold pen and color the edges if they wanted to frame the work. Only one decided to take me up on that offer, the ballerina.

I mounted the Shrinky Dink on a small piece of card stock and then put them on these small easels I had found at the art supply store.

I thought they were pretty cute.

If you look up the project on the Dick Blick site, you will see they used chalk pastel. When I tested the project prior to introducing it in class, this worked really well. However it was not very successful with the kids, which is why I quickly changed over to the permanent markers I have in the studio.  

snorkel diver, 9 year old (pastel)

On all accounts, the kids had a great time creating their artwork. Even when the work curled up on itself and was ruined. As each child finished a work, EVERYONE went to the oven to watch it shrink. And then everyone 'oohed' and 'aahhed' over the finished work as it came out of the oven, which was a great confidence boost for each artist.

The kids left the studio happy and singing my praises as my gramps use to say after a particularly satisfying piece of blueberry pie,"now that's living", because life doesn't get any better than a moment full of happiness.