Owl Assemblage

I know I have my fair share of owl projects on the blog but I couldn't resist another.



This is a recycled assemblage that includes some text.  It was a joint collaboration of by my 3 kids and I love the idea so much I am looking to incorporate it into this year's Art Program.






My kids absolutely love these "Look a Like" books from Joan Steiner.  When we go to the library they repeatedly take these out again and again....even my 13 yr old.

I started this project by having them look at these books to get the creative juices flowing. 

The kids then went on a treasure hunt looking for items in the recycling bin, the junk drawer, & odds and ends from the craft room.

For this owl we used:

- a scrap of shelf liner for the head
-,round corrugated packaging from a cookie tin for the body
-  assorted rings from bottles and a sour cream container (you know those rings you have to break to open) for the eyes and wings
- bread tags for the feet
- a picture hanger for the beak
- 2 acorn caps for the eyes
- some shells, rickrack, and pipe cleaner for the leaves and branches
- some old wood letters (you could cut some from cardboard) and a piece of a drinking straw for the OWL
- some washers for feathers and for the text

We glued all the pieces to a piece of cardboard for our background.  We used tacky glue.

We let it dry and then covered it with a coat of gesso but you could also use white acrylic paint.

When it was dry we experimented a bit with the paint.  At first we just did a brown wash on the owl and then painted the background with a black wash.


The kids were not impressed so we tried again.

This time we added color, for the leaves and branches, the beak, and the feet.  We also made the OWL white as well as around the eyes.


The boys added some details around the eyes with the silver sharpie and then my 13 yr old added the text with some suggestions from Mom of course!

I then covered it with a coat of glossy Mod podge and woohoo it looks 100 X's better.

See you next time.