Navigation Chart Collage

My last project I needed to prep for my art camp is a collage based project.  The toads are great samplers for me and below is what older toad created.

It includes seagrass, sponges, redfish, fiddler crabs and sperm whales.  The directions follow for anyone who'd like to try.  Note, the base of this project is a marine navigation chart and the theme is Atlantic marine life.  You could easily do this project with your state map and local trees or a hiking trail map and animals you saw on your hike - get creative.

First older toad painted on the grass with acrylic paint and a brush.

While that dried he drew his animals onto watercolor paper with Sharpie.  We like the double-ended ones so you can have extra fine lines or fat.

Then he went back to his acrylic paint and used a natural sponge to stamp on his sponges.  A natural sponge is important, you won't get much texture out of a kitchen sponge.  Also you might want to practice on a spare paper first.  Too much paint or too much pressure and you don't get a spongy look, you'll get a blob.  It doesn't really show in the picture but the corals are a bit shimmery.  We added a bit of iridescent medium to the base.  The toads love it so much they'll actually refuse to paint if I don't let them use it.  At first I thought it was a passing fad like the glitter paint obsession but this one's really sticking.  So warning, it will become your next favorite thing too.

Then he went back to his animals and with watercolor, colored them in.  Break for snack.  Animals then got cut out and glued on with a glue stick.  A little trick to glue sticks, don't buy the office supply brands, absolutely worthless.  Also, apply glue to your object on top of a spare piece of paper and get the glue all the way to the edges of the object.  Then when you stick it down, rub gently all over and it's really stuck.  Kids have a tendency, reinforced by the cleaneruppers, to just glue the center and then things don't stay on or have a peeled up look.  So reach for the scrap paper and be liberal with the glue.  Also craft glue will glob in one place and then run out the sides when pressed down so pass on it for these kinds of projects. 

Younger toad also did this project just with a brush and stamping so it works for extra young artists too.

Both my toads know our local marine life really well but I don't know what experience the camp kids will have so I'm bringing one of our relevant reference books for them too.