For Art-ober we are highlighting weekly art-focused activities! These can be as short as 10-15 minutes, or if you have the time/are enjoying yourselves extend it! The goal is to change things up a little and encourage creativity.
Art can help us relax and feel accomplished, and can be a good way to have some balance. The benefits apply to all ages, so feel free to join in on the fun and do the activity together!
We are headed into the last week of the Library’s ART-ober challenge! I hope you have gotten to try out some art along with us! If you have and have not yet shared it by tagging us in Instagram, please do so – we would love to see what you are making!
Spiders are fascinating creatures and their webs are engineered works of art. Since Halloween is coming up this weekend, here are some ideas inspired by the one time a year that spider webs are considered appropriate decorations.
One thing you can do is make a watercolor web painting! You can use just about anything to draw a web – white crayon is great, but you could also use glue and let it dry, or anything wax – like a candle.
Once the web is ready use your watercolors! It helps to get the page wet first if you want the colors to spread better – also why thicker paper is better for this task (paper plates, cardstock, or watercolor paper all work great).
If you don’t have any watercolors home, we have limited supplies at the Council Tree Library that you can come in and pick-up this week (10/26 – 10/31 while supplies last).
After you have applied watercolor and let it dry, you can draw on some spiders or silhouettes of other Halloween themes – haunted houses and black cats, witches and bats! Or you can add them at the start like this one:
Another idea – if you have ever made snowflakes in winter, you can use those same methods to make cut paper spider webs!
Take (or make by trimming a rectangle) a square piece of paper. The thinner the better for this – makes folding and cutting through layers easier! Fold the square in half to make a long rectangle. Then fold it in half again to make a square again, and fold it in half one last time to make a triangle. From the center point of the folded paper, draw a thick line up the middle to the other edge, and curved lines spreading out to the edges, cutting away in sections like you can see below. Unfold to reveal the paper spider web!
Other things to try this week:
- Decorate some bookmarks! We have themed ones to grab at the Council Tree Branch, as well as blanks so you can design your own!
- Carve some jack-o-lanterns.
- Painting weaving – make two similar paintings, cut one into strips horizontally and one vertically, then weave them together for a fun effect.
Give some of these ideas a try or feel free to come up with your own! We would love to see what you make – please share your art on Instagram by tagging @poudrelibraries and using the hashtags #artober and #librarychallenge.
Related Reading:
Ghosts in the house! by Kazuno Kohara
The weaver by Qian Shi
Paper crafts for Halloween by Randel McGee
Halloween crafts by Annalees Lim
Origami For Halloween by Robyn Hardyman