Christmas Collage

Welcome to five days of Christmas Crafts for all ages. These have all been differentiated for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 but are also lots of fun for adults.

Christmas Collage

Brief Description:

Students will exercise their scissor-skills, learn about spatial awareness and design whilst they create vintage style collage.

Keywords:
Collage, Space, Balance, Design, Complimentary, Christmas, Journey, Sparkle, Space, Travel, Winter, festival, celebration

Materials Needed:

Paper, card, pencil, Coloured printed Christmas themed paper/ or hand draw designs, glitter or glitter glue, ribbon, vintage image of favourite place or sepia photograph, scissors

Instructions:

• On a piece of paper, plan out the design of your collage. Think about your favourite place you would like to visit at Christmas it could be a country, a favourite spot at a park or even grandmas sofa.
• You will need to decide what image you are going to collage on top of your favourite place. I have chosen a Christmas tree but you could use an angel, a star, the nativity, a bauble etc.
• Collect all of your images. Be careful if you are using the Internet to look for images, shutter stock has some great images that you can use for a small charge. Alternatively you can collect your images from magazines, newspaper, photographs, wrapping paper, Christmas cards etc.
• I have decided to create my collage in a square shape but again, you can create your collage to any shape or size. Cut out your image of your favourite place to the size and shape required. Mount this picture onto a piece of brightly coloured paper to give you’re your base for your collage.
• Carefully mark on the back of your image to be collaged on top of your base. Cut along these lines with care. Think about how you are going to space these on your collage.

• Cut along the lines you have marked on the piece of paper

• Glue the pieces in place on top of your base.

• Add any additional detail to your collage, I have added a star on the top of my tree and a line of glitter glue on each shape.

• The date has been added to the collage using glitter glue.

 For a final touch print off or create a wish list for Santa. Roll this into a scroll and secure with a piece of ribbon

• Glue the scroll onto the collage

Differentiation:
Key stage 1: You can use pre cut shapes or templates for younger children to colour and cut out. This is a great activity to practice scissor skills, however why not have the children rip and tear the images out giving your rough edges – adding to the effect. Painted hand prints with a red dot on the middle finger and a squiggly off the thumb makes a great reindeer – give it a try.
Key stage 2: Why not extend the collage by adding additional layers that can hang from the central section? This can be done by cello taping another shape to the bottom of the shape above. Once again you have to carefully think about weight distribution and balance. If you make one side to heavy the collage will tilt when hung. Instead of using string why not use pipecleaners to attach the hanging images. You can bend the pipecleaners into lots of different positions so the hanging images don’t all hang in the same direction.
An alternative method of adhering the hanging images to the central image could be to use a hole punch and tie the hanging images in place using wool.

Gifted and Talented: Think about the use of symmetry with the Collage. Imagine there is a mirror held in the centre on the image, both sides should look alike and mirror each other.
Consider additional impact such as cutting out the windows from buildings house, having a door that opens, a star that lifts to reveal a message etc to create areas of interest to your collage and make it stand out.

For more information on arts and craft classes for all ages contact Lisa Smith at the_laboratory@hotmail.co.uk