Styrofoam sculptures and fabric

Fun stuff to do with recycled materials in the classroom!

Y'know all that styrofoam that comes in electronics boxes? There are some fun projects that you can do with the material for a great classroom art project.

What you need: (basics)

Styrofoam blocks of different sizes from various sources.
Plastic coated wire coat hangers
Old linen squares, cotton sheet patches, light fabrics of different colors and patterns
Wax paper

Added fun!:
Beads, feathers, google eyes, colorful pipe cleaners, sequins, foam pieces
Bottle caps, soda can loops, corks, whatever!
Extra glue for adding on extras

Tools:
Scissors
Wire cutters
Glue
Aileens's fabric stiffener, mod podge (hard), or collage glue (hard)*
(you can also use a white glue and water solution, but results can be inconsistent)

1. Using wire cutters (adult help required!), undo the coat hangers and cut the wire into different lengths.
2. Carefully use the wire to attach together the styrofoam blocks into basic forms. For extra strength, you can glue the blocks together. You can also use wire to create legs, arms, and other extensions. Be careful of the cut end of the wire! It can be sharp.
3. With your scissors (again, adult help required), cut fabric into 4-6" strips.
4. Pour fabric stiffener (whichever one you choose) into a paper or plastic bowl. I use the throw away kind, because they can be recycled into other art!
5. Dip fabric into stiffener and wrap your styrofoam sculpture, mummy style or paper mâché style, until all styrofoam surface of the sculpture are covered.
6. Set wet sculpture on wax paper to dry. It can take a couple of days in a sunny window with good air flow. Fabric stiffeners can also take longer to dry if it is wet or humid weather.
7. After the fabric has dried and hardened, you can use Elmer's glue to paste on eyes, sequins, beads, etc. Let them dry for a day or two.
8. Enjoy you sculpture!

* fabric stiffeners come in different strengths, roughly: soft, medium, and hard. The hard version will give a sculpture the most strength. You can also use a clear, heavy acrylic gel to cover the sculpture.

As you can see, this sculpture can be very small or very large depending on what you would like to create. This 3.5' sculpture can easily be lifted with one hand!

Comments

[Gintoki]

Whenever I think of Styrofoam, I think of the endless possibilities associated with art, especially sculptures. Upon discovery of this post related to huge white robots, I immediately identified Styrofoam as a powerful tool in regenerating modern art, despite the fact we know of how many talented hands this generation has. Anything from Styrofoam cup art to Styrofoam block carvings can be done – time for a little scavenger hunt out in the wilderness of unused school commodities.