Art project for kids - from Meaningful Mama

Hey Brassy readers! I am so excited to share this idea with you from Jodi of Meaningful Mama ! 

I love the arts and creating with my kids and this super cool project does both! Give her some love! Thanks Jodi and sharing a tutorial today!

Sometimes I like to bring to you more involved crafts, like when I turned my children's photos into interchangeable blocks. I also loved turning my kids into their own magnet dolls. Apparently I like to manipulate my children's images. I've done the same things in this craft. From where did this vision come? The principal at my daughter's school approached me and introduced me to another teacher. He said, "I thought of you because there is an Andy Warhol exhibit at our local museum and his students are going. I thought that since you were an artist and former teacher you might be able to come up with a lesson idea." I almost laughed out loud, but I composed myself and explained that "artist" was a generous term. We will stick with "psuedo-artist" for now, thank you very much. I did decide to take his challenge to heart and come up with something that would bring the art of Andy Warhol alive to these kids, and out of that stemmed this easy craft you can do with your own kids. We loved it! So, what's the process? 

Take a picture of your child. Hey - take a picture of your dog or yourself.  You can do this craft with or for anyone! With Kenzie, I added a hair ribbon, and she already had some fabulous beads on her neck. Abby's outfit was a bit more simple, but it worked well. You want to make sure you have a pretty plain background and a clear picture. 

The next step is to crop it and turn it black and white. You will want to crop it to be a square. I use Picasa, but you can use an online editing program like Ribbet if you don't have a program on your own computer. You will want to print this out four times.

The next step is to color the images. Now, some of you art history buffs may be calling foul. You may look at these images and say they aren't exactly like Andy Warhol because we didn't color the face. You are right. Do a Google image search if you have no idea what I am talking about. I'm giving myself some leniency by saying that art is subjective and this is our own version. I'll tell you what, you are allowed to color the faces anyway you please. I kinda liked keeping all the skin black and white, but it's up to you. So the kids colored. I did one example for both kids on their own pictures. I talked about wanting to make each image different. I introduced the idea of contrasting colors end encouraged them to use contrasting colors where two colors would be touching. This project seem to be perfectly suited for Abby (age 5). It would definitely be a lot of fun for kids or adults of any age above that as well. Kenzie (age 3 1/2) needed a bit of extra guidance. I found the best way to get a cool product for her was to let her choose the colors for the different areas. Then, I drew a line around a specific section with the marker. She was then able to color it in well. The last one she did completely on her own without the added help. 

The next step was to cut out the square. You could use regular scissors, but I liked the straight cut of a paper cutter. Like how Kenzie has figured out how to get the pressure to do it herself? 

The final step is putting it all together. I used a piece of tag board we had, and I cut it to size. Then, the girls were able to glue their pictures in place.

There you have it. Your own, personalized Andy Warhol masterpiece. 

The kids loved it. The teacher loved it. I told him I could help in any capacity. Looks like I got myself a job back in front of a classroom. He wants me to come in and do the lesson. It will be fun to be teaching in a school classroom again. Just for the day though - trust me.