My Heart

To some a special day is coming this Saturday.  With this craft, I tried to instill into the kids to have a care and love for others not just because a certain day is celebrated, but because in this age we live in, nothing is guaranteed.  Everyday we need to be those who say "I love you".

With that, I must say this project was labor intensive (in a good way). Don't forget I work for a day care and have 28 kids to care for. This activity was with a view to keeping for a few years.  Credit goes to http://krokotak.com/2012/11/egg-carton-heart/.

If this was going to be a fun project, I had to be the one to cut all those egg cartons. The little ones would not have the strength to cut out 12 separate casings; and on top of that the scissors we had would have totally been a frustration to them.  Do you know how many days I had to spend cutting? A whole week.  Eventually even I had to resort to a tool other than scissors--my trusty box cutter. I ended up with two bags.

 This is a reprisal of the craft I did last year.  I have no pictures to compare with because my computer files got corrupted.  Last year, the kids had the eggs hot glued to a white canvas.  This time we changed it up.  The kids did water color on the canvas.  Well--that was interesting.  As I'm not an art teacher, I did not have the wherewithal to say not to waterlog the canvas.

Here are the soggy canvases, but not to worry.  All I had to say was "NO MORE PAINT!"

This is a small montage of the canvases.  Many more to go.

Next, all those individual egg cases had to be painted white.  From experience last year, not all egg cartons are made of the same material, and I don't know what kind of paint Krokotak used.  So I figured for the painted cases to look good, we needed a base which was regular white house paint.

Once painted white, they were left overnight to day.  They had to do twelve egg casings.

The next layering was to paint the egg casings in a color.  Unfortunately or fortunately, there was no red or pink paint available.  We used a metallic paint that would add a simmer to the casings.

Now you see all of our limited supply of paint.  Behind the scenes, I had to go over all of those egg casings because there was the need of another coat of paint.  The first go around was not effective. These were left overnight to dry also.

The final step was to hot glue the casings to the canvas.  Last year, I did this step.  This year, voila, the kids were able to do this step with my modeling.  Take a look!

We're really proud of these little guys!

Finally, the results!

Supplies:

1. egg cartons
2. scissors/box cutter
3. white paint
4. metallic paint
5. canvas
6. water colors
7. hot glue gun
8. newspaper
9. a whole lot of PATIENCE

Directions:
1. cut egg cartons into separate cases
2. cover table with newspaper
3. paint canvas (if desired); let dry
4. paint egg casings white; let dry
5. paint egg casings into desired color; let dry
6. hot glue cases onto canvas into shape of a large "V" housing little "v" (heart shape)