Recycled Art and School Holiday Programs

Recycled Art Workshops

What can I say, it is so much more fun for me personally to get a whole assortment of recycled materials, industrial waste, fabric offcuts, household recyclables and see what I can come up with.  Its amazing what you can do with old cardboard cylinders, some upholstery fabric offcuts, old buttons, an array of clean industrial and ewaste and don't forget the discarded hessian coffee sacks. .

Especially if you hand these materials over to kids.  Mix that up with a bit of glitter, some paint and glue and you will be amazed at what they can come up with.

We have been at Gasworks Art Park as part of their school holiday program and had so much fun.  Our first class was for the littlies and of course most of the Mums joined in.  The theme Magical Flying Fish and Sea Creatures.  I have never seen such an assortment of incrediably imaginative sea creatures in one room.  Using old chocolate box lids with our colourful collection of fabrics and industrial offcuts we saw such things as flying sea pigs, a few land and sea living sharks, a couple of flying seahorses and some other creatures yet to be indentified.  Glitter and sparkles were added and then our mini artists (with a bit of help) attached their works of art to their coloufully decorated cardboard rools with some string and they went flying around the room.  They all left very happy with their latest artistic creation.s

Our afternoon class that day was predominately filled with young boys aged 7-12 making the most of our collection of discarded computer parts and a bit of tarzan grip along with some rubber offcuts and few other odds and ends.  They created an assortment of crazy bugs, lifelike robots and even a solar powered house complete with insulation.

This week (today in fact) saw a group of 8 7-12yr olds a mix of boys and girls really use both their craft and art skills to create a collection of amazing aprons from old coffee sacks and decorate a series of wooden cooking spoons (though these are no longer recommended for cooking with).  Taking paint, glue and the materials on hand all sorts of designs were created over the duration of the day.

We had everything from bright pink spoons with glitter and butterflies to of course a couple of spoons dedicated to their favourite AFL team (we are in Melbourne of course).  The apron designs were quite magical, thanks to our favourite (now retired to be a full time Mum to beautiful twin boys) dance teacher Miss Blue Bells donation of sparkly and colourful fabric offcuts.  The old coffee sacks will never be mistaken for that again or for that matter be used to carry around coffee beans.  These beautiful creations will now be adorning both bedroom and kitchen walls.

So thats been our school holiday program and next holidays we will be down at Warrnambool for Australia's largest kids fesitval - Fun for Kids, 8 days of exciting recycled art workshops from making masks through to caps, wands and robot badges.  So keep an eye out for ticket sales and get yourselves booked in. 

Now its back to getting ready for term 2 kids art classes for 5-12year olds at the Pixie Collective on High Street in Northcote.

Classes begin Tuesday 3rd April so make sure you book in by emailing us clare@visualfeastcreations.com.au