Finishing My Dream House with Textured Papers

Textured papers are added to our previous work

Today we finish our collage images of dream houses with textured papers. I bought corrugated colored papers and thick handmade papers from India. They both provide a textural quality that differs significantly from the smoother papers we have been using. The handmade papers are wonderful, the range in color nuanced and the edges when torn deckled and fuzzy to the touch. I show them the new material. There are a lot of ohhs and ahhs. Children of this age are very attracted to good art supplies. Color and texture is important to them and they eagerly wait for me to finish my demo. They want to work right away!

I tell them these textured papers can be used in a number of ways. I show them the handmade papers and how if you tear them instead of cutting they have these soft edges. "What do you suppose they might be good to be used for?" I ask. "What kind of things have edges like this?" I wondered.

"You can make clouds".

" You can make trees".

" And flowers..."

" I'd make a shining sun".

"And what about the corrugated paper, what would you do with that?" I wondered.

"I'd make curtains with those." one student said. Another having felt the sample corrugated paper after I had given them out for examination said, "You know this paper has long bumpy lines....I could cut them out and make lots of grass." "Yeah" said another "or stairs to your front door. They look like stairs."

"OK." I ask them, " Do you remember the plans you made last week? Let's all look again before we start. What needs to be done? What shall we do? Each of us has something special to work on with these papers to finish up today. And when we are done, we'll have a short gallery walk, to see what everyone has done.We will have plenty to share after we see all the ideas that were used for these papers."