Wood Scrap Collage

This is a continuation of our Wood Scrap Sculpture post. We had so much fun making our sculptures so we decided to just paint flat wood scraps and practice mixing colors on each wooden shape. Each individual scrap turned out beautiful, but when you put them all together they made some amazing Wood Scrap Collages.

Materials Needed for Wood Scrap Collage:

Wood Scraps

Paint

paint brushes

Glue

Cardboard base

First gather some wood scraps. I've gotten wood scraps from craft stores, home stores, and the Wood Shop Teacher at the High School that I work at too. 

Then we just started painting and mixing colors on the flat pieces of wood. This was a lot of fun and many of these could even stand on their own as beautiful miniature paintings.

Then we started arranging them in different ways to create collages.  

Another way....overlapping.

This was a great activity....painting the scraps, arranging them, and just simply playing/building with them. You can glue them in the end or just leave them as is to arrange and rearrange. Hope we have inspired you to create some colorful scrap wood paintings or collages.

Wood Scrap Sculptures

Wood Scrap Sculptures are so much fun.  I am lucky enough to have a Wood Shop Teacher in my High School so that I could make these with my High School Sculpture students and my daughter. You could probably get scrap wood donations from a lumberyard or Home Supply Store too. A great artist to correlate with this project is artist Louise Nevelson. She was a Wood Scrap Sculptor extraordinaire!

Materials Needed:

Wood Scraps
Wood base to build on
wood glue
brush to spread glue evenly
Tempera paint

This was the invitation to build and make a wood scrap sculpture.

Here is the artist at work.  A brush and glue worked well for my daughter, but older kids would rather use the glue bottle. After building, let the sculpture dry.

Then you are ready to paint.  C really got into this part...painting upside-down.

Here are our finished masterpieces: # 1

Masterpiece # 2:

My High School Students loved this project too.  Here are some of their sculptures. A lot of them chose spray paint to finish them off.

Woodworking Fun With Inspiration from a Book

C has been having a lot of fun with woodworking and real tools lately.  It all began from inspiration from a free woodworking workshop at our local home improvement store Home Depot (our last post). Many of my readers have also informed me that Lowes does free woodworking workshops for kids too! Here is C hard at work with a hammer and nails.

We were also inspired by the book Bruno The Carpenter by Lars Klinting.  This book is about Bruno the Beaver and how he needs to build a tool box for all his disorganized tools. If you want to make his tool box there is a diagram and steps to create it!  The book also has a page that lists and names all the tools Bruno used to make this tool box.  Cassie had fun memorizing each tool and then actually getting to use some of his tools was even more fulfilling!!!  It is a great book to inspire carpentry in your children! There is a book called Bruno the Baker by the same author.  We will be checking that one out soon!  

We actually got some scrap wood from Home Depot and used some scraps from our garage too. We don't have munch of a work bench so we brought this project outside. Here is a close up view.

We happened to have an old hand drill from Grandfather and it is the perfect kind for a kid to use. They do sell kids sized power drills on this website.  In case your wondering...I was right there supervising C!!!

We did some work with a screwdriver too, but C enjoyed the hammer much more.  Lately we've been letting C experiment with unscrewing items around the house too.  She loves it!

C attached some crafty wooden hearts with nails,  which was fun too.

 Here are 2 of her creations.  She could have spent all day pounding in nails and twisting screws in.

Cassie even took a pencil and marked off some places on an old piece of fence found in our garage.  I actually used a hand saw and cut some pieces off for her and she was intrigued and wanted to help! (a little too sharp and bulky!)

Still more hammering...she didn't want to stop!!!

C's 3 creations after this woodworking session.

These creations inspired some imaginative play with cars....she said they were roads!

C actually taped them together and put them on our coffee table!

Cassie really enjoyed this and wanted to pound more nails for the past few days.  We need to get more wood and supplies!!!

What are some other woodworking projects that we could make?

What woodworking projects have you worked on with your children?

This post is linked to:

Craft Schooling Sunday
No TIme For Flashcards

Woodworking for Free

Did you know on the first Saturday of every month the home improvement store Home Depot offers a kid's woodworking workshop for absolutely free?  We went this past Saturday and Cassie totally enjoyed it!  It is for kids 5 years and up, but I did see younger kids there too! They offer a different project each time too.  You get a kit, apron, pin, and a certificate of completion.  Pretty cool!  This past Saturday's project was a coaster set. I don't have pictures of C creating the project, but have some of her painting the project with acrylic craft paint. Here is the finished unpainted coaster set, apron, pin, and certificate.  Cassie was SO PROUD of this!

C was very invested in painting her coaster set!

More painting! 

FInished painted coaster set!

Cassie is looking forward to more of these woodworking workshops! (Next month's project is a pencil box.) This project has inspired some woodworking of our own too!  Stay tuned for future posts...

I hope that you take advantage of these free classes at Home Depot...you have nothing to lose! (Too bad I wasn't being paid to promote Home Depot!)

What kinds of woodworking projects have you made with your children?

What do you think about letting kids use REAL tools?

Link to information about Home Depot Workshops can be found here.

Here is a Great website that has all kinds of Kid's woodworking kits and real tools : RED TOOLBOX

(not just plastic toys)