State art is kind of a thing. At least I think it is? Anyway, I needed to come up with a quick project for Ethan's class project that would be auctioned off at our school's silent auction and carnival. I had done this same thing last year with Weston's class and it took me about 20 minutes total in the classroom getting fingerprints and once it was dry, stuck it in a frame and we were done. It was so easy, but the look on the kids faces when they saw it finished was awesome.
To make this piece of art, I printed out an outline of the state of California and cut out the inside very carefully. Then I taped it together with a piece of washi tape to a piece of cardstock and started dipping the kids fingers in paint one by one. I probably did about 10-15 thumbprints per kid to fill up the state. Before I started the painting process, I used a sticker to mark our town, and then started painting. I chose to do acrylic paints because they tend to leave a smooth, glossy finish as opposed to other paints. Once it dried, I took off the state of California stencil that I had made and BAM, the state of California with fingerprints.
Now, I think I need to make some time to go and make Ethan's teacher one. . . she's been wanting one ever since the carnival!
Did you wait until they each dried between each color?
ReplyDeleteI did one kid at a time, right after another, so I didn't wait. The tricky part is helping them not smear and just stamp their fingerprint, dipping finger in paint each time. :) I hope that answers your question. :)
DeleteHi! Thank you for these directions! Did you have any issues with the paint running under the stencil? I did a practice run of this project at home before trying it with my daughter's class and the acrylic paint ran a bit and stuck to the paper underneath once it dried. Where do you think I went wrong?
ReplyDeleteHey there! I am so glad you tried it. I didn't have a ton of running of the paint. I used 110 lb cardstick and made sure the fingers went straight up and didn't move around. It might have just been that the acrylic paint you used was thinner, or might have used a little too much. I used a lot of the Martha Stewart brand paints.
DeleteThank you so much for the quick response!
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