Plaster hands project

I haven't posted the past few weeks about the Wednesday art atelier but it's going stronger than ever with lots of enthusiasm from everyone and lots of new people wanting to do it. It's almost getting too large to control, eek which is why the program has sort of become "the host you get to decide who gets invited." It works well that way because new people can come and go and no one is obliged to do it every week, and besides my friends can't be expected to be invited to the home of a casual acquantance (especially in France--so not done, ever. period.) So each week someone sort of volunteers to do it, usually invites the three core members (me and two other moms), and invites a friend or two of their own.

A few weeks ago we did a group with a new neighbor friend who's an avid gardener. She decided to do yogurt pots that the kids decorated with cardboard cutout faces and then let the kids plant some seeds. The kids really got in to this and they got introduced to planting. It was a nice short activity that they really enjoyed. I didn't get any pictures but it was a pretty straightforward little craft project.

Last week we finished a project with a mom who did plaster hands. How cool is that? Then all the kids painted them in the style of Niki de Saint Phalle, the artist probably best known for her lips fountain outside the Pompidou Center.

As you can see her art really appeals to kids. Well kids and adults. (I *love* this angel sculpture and would love to make a mini one for my bedroom...)



The supplies:

latex gloves (one for each kid)
a small bag of plaster (diy store)
water
acrylic paints
a black permanent marker
varnish


1) Mix plaster into a cake like consitency (not too watery, in fact more thick than a normal batch). Have kids help fill the gloves.



2) The tricky part, let them dry. You can't close the gloves because the trapped air will make them crack (we found this out later and the mom host had to make a new set of them!) You have to hold them for several minutes and then lay them on a flat surface when they're dry enough.

3) The following week it's paint time! The discovery of the artist Niki de Saint Phalle was one of the main reasons the mom wanted to do the activity so we encouraged the kids to copy her style by having them draw zones onto their hands with circles and stripes using a black marker. There were also a lot of bright colors in the paint glasses. The adolescent girls who did the atelier with us adored this project and spent at least forty minutes painting theirs with heart and flowers. They were so deep in concentrating it was funny.

4) After the paint dried you might want to encourage them to redo the marker lines because they all get painted over. A final coat of varnish makes them all shiny and nice.

5) To display them (because you'll definitely want to--they're gorgeous), you can either stand them up straight by prepping ahead--sanding and sawing the bottoms flat, or I like the idea of hanging them from the ceiling with an eye hook screwed into the bottoms and invisible fishing line.



The hands are really fragile and at least four kids broke a finger off while painting them and transporting them home. Make sure you have some glue on hand!