Celtic Crosses 2013

In a repeat of a project I did 2 years ago, I had the K-1 group make crosses for St. Patrick's Day. Tinfoil, pencils to emboss with, paint and some construction paper. The main concepts are pattern, and how to use paint to "antique" the metal. Fun and simple.

Celtic Crosses

To mark St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to get away from shamrocks and leprechauns (I love those, but can only do so many art projects involving those items!)

Also, since we are a Christian school, making a cross would be really cool.  What made this standout was the technique: aluminum foil embossed and then aged with paint. I had envisioned using this technique for another project, but ended up using it here.

The technique involved me folding some sheets of foil into long multi-layered strips. Each kid was given one and they cut it into two. Then they had to used  blunt pencil to incise/emboss lines and decoration into the soft foil. Then with a slightly damp brush they put green paint onto the foil and wiped off the excess.

The final result was either stone-like or similar to aged bronze! Really cool.

Week 23: St. Patrick's Day

Since the the older kids had a field trip I just had the K-2 class. It was St. Patrick's week, which is one of my favorite holidays, and green is my favorite color too;-)


An impromptu idea was to make shamrocks out of hearts, which the kids are pretty good at making.  The great thing is that the fold in the heart is perfect for maing it look 3-D. I had the kids make a bunch of different green hearts as well as some real simple squares of green and brown for a "leprechaun" hat that the shamrocks would be sprouting from. All this got pasted down, with the idea that the three hearts pasted together made a shamrock and only half the heart was glued so that the other part stuck off the paper to give it a lively look.

The kids did a fine job on these and they were dead simple to get organized and make.