In anticipation of Vincent Van Gogh's Birthday on March 30th, we are making 12 Sunflowers Tissue Paper Recycled Cardboard Paper-Mache Craft as inspired by his painting, Sunflowers 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
"Twelve sunflowers lean toward the light. Five are wide open, seven shut tight." In The Garden with Van Gogh board book (buy here).This board book series is a fun way to introduce fine art to smaller children. Adrian has been enjoying this book since he was one year old. Each of Van Gogh's timeless paintings is accompanied by a simple four line playful rhyming text.
Sunflowers were Van Gogh's favorite flowers. In anticipation of Gauguin's arrival to Arles, he was excitedly decorating the house preparing everything for his friend's arrival. He painted four pictures of sunflowers in rapid succession, and another three the following year. 13 Artists Children Should Know book (buy here).
To make this craft, we are referring to a Tissue Paper Flowers Craft book (buy here), which features incredibly simple-to-make tissue paper flowers that look good enough to fool the bees. The book has clear and easy to follow instructions, and it comes with 75 sheets of brilliantly colored tissue paper and variety of green pipe cleaners for stems.
How to make Van Gogh's inspired 12 Sunflowers Craft: ✂️🔸📌poke 🔸slide 🔸🌼crunch
- layer paper at least four-fold and cut out a circle or an oval pattern. (The less perfect the shape is, the better the flower will look! Crunching was Adrian's favorite part!)
- poke one end of a pipe cleaner and slide cut-out paper circles. (The more you poke and slide, the fluffier the flower will be. Adrian was doing about five circles per stem since he had to do twelve flowers! You be the judge of how much patience does your child have. If you are making just one flower, you may layer more cut-outs.)
- roll the other end of the pipe cleaner into a nub,
- slide all the papers towards the nub and scrunch ~ the more you scrunch and squeeze, the better the flower will come out,
- we also used color combination since on Van Gogh's painting, sunflowers had shades of yellow, orange, some brown, and some white.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/210686376
To decorate the flower "vase," Adrian is using paper-mache technique, and applies golden recycled gift-wrapping paper to a recycled paper-towel cardboard roll.
First, apply mod podge to your recycled towel or toilet paper roll.
While still wet, stick cut pieces of paper (we are using recycled gold wrapping paper).
This is an amazing fine-motor craft which besides stimulating those little fingers, promotes creativity, patience, and teaches about art and great artists!
Happy 🎂Birthday, Vincent Van Gogh! We hope you would have liked our🎁present!
Read here "Vincent van Gogh's 🎨 Birthday 🎂 – How we 🎉 celebrate" post.
Read here a post "Vincent van Gogh – Introducing the World's Greatest Artists series."
For more on Paper Mache read here a post "Pasting a glass jar Paper Mache at two years old."
Are you preparing to celebrate Van Gogh's birthday? I would love to know what your ideas are!
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