A home project for all ages, students can create their own butterfly by drawing on a coffee filter and using Chromatography, or the separation of mixture. and this happens on these art pieces though the coffee filter's capillary action, which is when the water makes its way up the coffee filter and slowly dissolves, or breaks down, the marker pigments!  

Materials: 

• Coffee filter (as many as you'd like to make! White works best but any type of coffee filter will work!)

• Markers (any color you'd like to use! Black works very well because the color is made by mixing many inks together!)

• Cup for water & a small amount of water

• Clothes Pin

Steps: 

1. Flatten out the coffee filter. 

2. Begin to draw your colors on with the markers. I suggest starting up by the end of the circle on the bottom of the coffee filter, as the water will reach it but the ink will leak down if its close to the water. 

• Make sure your marker line is nice and thick, as more ink means more dissolving! 

3. Fold up your coffee filter so that it fits into the cup, but only the tip of the coffee filter touches the water. 

• Be careful here! Sometimes that coffee filter dips too much into the water! 

4. Let the water do its thing! It will slowly move up the coffee filter thorugh capillary action and will begin to drag the ink along with it! 

5. After about 5-8 minutes, remove the coffee filter and lay out so that it dries. The water will continue doing its up, so just set it aside and come back to it later! 

6. Once dry, fold up the coffee filter so that it has "wings" by pinching the top and bottom together, then clip on the clothes pin! 

7. (Optional): You can paint the clothes pin black if you would like, or even add some eyes and antennae to the top of the clothes pin! 

Make your own animal portrait using a re-purposed egg carton! 

Materials: 

• Egg Carton (paper works best) 

• Scissors 

• Paint (I used tempera paint as it is easily washable) 

• Brush(es) (big and small as necessary) 

• Water Cup

• Paper Towel

• Glue bottle 

• Cardboard (Cut into 9x12" or 8x10") 

Steps: 

1. Start by cutting the top off the piece. It'll make everything else easier to cut. 

2. Depending on the animal, cut out 2 of egg-holders. 

3. Continue to cut this piece down so that you either have 2 "eyes" from the egg-holding sections, or cut them down so that they become "ears" . 

4. Paint the whole piece with the animals color. You may have to mix paints to get the colors you want. 

5. Once dry, paint eyes with white and black, and noses, beaks, etc. with other colors. 

6. Put your newly created animal head on the cardboard and draw with a pencil the bottom of the head. This will help with painting and gluing later. 

7. Draw the animal's body on the cardboard. 

8. Paint over the drawing you made to make a 2 dimensional body. 

9. Glue your animals head onto the cardboard. 

10. (Optional) Paint a background for your animal before gluing your animal head on. 

Cut and glue egg cartons to make your own silly face! 

(Tip: This project should be completed with an egg carton with a flat top.)

Materials: 

• Egg Carton (flat top necessary) 

• Scissors 

• Glue bottle 

Steps: 

1. Start by opening your egg carton and cutting the top from the bottom. Be careful with this step, as the top will be used as the face, and the bottom will be used to create your features! 

2. Cut your top into the shape you want for your overall face. This can be pretty much any shape you want. Make sure to use the inside of the top.  

• Hint: The sides of the top can be cut long or short for different lengths of hair. 

3. Using the bottom of the egg carton, cut out the shapes you want for eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. 

• There are a ton of ways to do this, so really just experiment and try your own shapes! 

4. As you cut the shapes, make sure to place them down first and check how it looks before gluing. Once you like what the piece looks like, use only a little bit a glue. As Mr. R always says, "dot, dot, not a lot!" 

Optional: 

5. Paint or color your face! 

• • If you choose to do this, I suggest using painting or coloring your features before gluing them down, as the painting/coloring process will be much tougher once it's glued.

Using objects around your home, make your own abstract work of art! 

Abstract: Artwork created using line, shape, and color, but having no recognizable person, place, or thing from the real world. 

Materials: 

• T.P. or Paper Towel Roll (just the cardboard centers!) 

OR

• Plastic Dixie Cup (These can be easily washed and reused, and both sides of the cup can be used.) 

• Plate (Paper or styrofoam to throw out easily, or a ceramic plate that can be washed) 

• Tempera Paint 

• Paper (any size, can also be various colors!) 

• Tray 

Steps: 

1. Put your paint onto your plate(s). You can use as many colors as you want, but you'll have to wash or cut down your TP roll to have enough edges to use. 

• Make sure this is spread out so that you can put the whole edge of your roll into the paint. 

2. Dip the edge of your TP Roll (the open side), or your cup (the top or bottom), into the paint. 

3. Stamp your TP Roll or cup on your paper in random areas! Have fun using the different colors and the different sizes of circle (if you are uisng the cups), and dont be afraid to overlap your circles! 

Optional: 

• You can use different colors of paper to change up the look of this piece! 

• Once the cirlces are dry, you can color in between them with various materails, including paint, colored pencil, crayon, etc! 

Create a mosaic of a piece of fruit using color swatches you can get at a hardware store! 

Materials: 

• Scissors 

• Paper

• Glue Stick

• Swatches in various hues (lights and darks) of a specific color. 

Steps: 

1. Start this project by drawing a simple outline of the fruit you wish to make. 

• Bigger paper means bigger artwork and an less cutting of the swatches, but make sure you have enough of them! 

2. Make sure you have light and dark hues of the color you wish to use.

• I created a Granny Smith Apple here, and used green as my overall color, with lighter variations of the green even going to yellow, and darker as well. 

3. Think of where you want the "light" hitting the fruit. Use this as the starting point for your swatches. They'll move from lighter to darker as you go from one side of the fruit to another. This helps with creating shading on your fruit. 

4. Cut your color swatches into shapes. I used triangles for this piece, but you can use any shape. I suggest cutting most of them into larger pieces. You can cut them down further once you get going. 

5. Start laying down your colors from light to dark on your fruit outline. I mixed in both the lighter green and the yellow to give the impression of the light hitting one side of my apple. 

6. Continue to cut and glue your pieces as you move across the apple. Remember its ok to mix some darker swatches in here and there as you go, even in the light spaces. It will make the piece more dynamic (more energy or "movement" even though its not moving). 

7. As you move, start to use the darker pieces, and mix up your sizes of the shape you are using, making some bigger and some smaller. 

• Make sure these pieces are next to each other but not overlapping, leave some space so you can see the paper. 

8. Remember to be careful around the edges of your shape. It doesn't have to curve like an apple does, but the points of one shape should match up with the points of another so it moves the "line" around in the general direction of the curve of the apple (or whatever fruit you are making). 

9. If you have larger open spaces, start cutting smaller pieces to fit them in and close them up a little bit. 

• Here's where you can get creative and add some smaller dark pieces to the light, or lighter pieces to the dark. But don't over do it. 

10. If your fruit has a leaf or stem, make sure to have that color swatch as well to create that piece. I used the same greeen in my apple for the leaf, but had to use a brown swatch to get the stem. 

Use simple materials (the main one can be found at home!) to make yourself a nice big slice of cake! 

Materials: 

• Cardboard 

• Scissors or X-Acto Knife

• Ruler 

• Pencil

• Glue bottle 

• Hot Glue (optional but helpful)

• Paint (acyrlic)

• Paint Brush 

• Water Cup

Steps: 

1. Start by taking your card board pieces and cutting them into 2 triangles and 3 rectangles. 

• In the image, the triangles were cut to have each side measure 5 inches. Two (2) of the rectangles were also cut to 5 inches in lengh and 2 inches in width, and one (1) was cut to 4 1/2 inches in length and 2 inches in height (this helped the pieces fit together on top of the triangle piece. 

2. Glue your smaller length rectanlge (the 4 1/2" one) to one side of your triangle perpendicularly (the rectangle should be up on its edge while the triangle is laying flat on the table). Make sure to use enough glue, and hold the rectangle down for a bit to give it time to dry. 

3. Do the same process with both of your other rectangles, building the sides of your slice of cake. 

4. OPTIONAL: Once each piece is on and togther, you can take hot clue and put some dabs between the rectangle and triangle, and between each of hte rectangles where they meet, this will make the piece more solid. 

5. Put glue on the top edges of each of the rectangle pieces, and put your second triangle piece on top of them, closing in your slice of cake. 

6. Let Dry. 

7. Once dry, you can paint or color your slice of cake! Paint 2 sides (rectangles) with the "flavor" of your cake. You can even use another color in the middle to make a line for a "jelly" or a "cookie" center!

8. Paint the top and the last rectangle of your slice of cake with the color frosting you would like. The edges of the triangle (where it connects with the rectangle) can also be painted to make it look like the forsting has a thickness on top of the slice of cake! 

9. Paint your sprinkles in any color you'd like, and let dry!