The Blue Barn: Create a Turkey or Peacock collage

So for those of us in the United States I couldn't let November slip by without a little turkey craft. However, knowing that many of you will not be feasting on turkey and stuffing this week I thought I would include an extra peacock/swan bird template so that you can totally join in the fun and create a bird too using this really cool transparency film method.

So these super duper awesome feathers were created using a really fun process. The process involves painting and color mixing first on transparency sheets. The painting of which are just SO good to paint because the paint glides onto the smooth surface so effortlessly the kids will have a great time swirling and splurging all the yummy colors together. But what I like best about this collage is that we end up using the reverse side of the film so you get these really cool color mixing reverse brush strokes which are lost usually when you paint on paper.

Anyway not to prattle on too much please check out our super simple bird collages below, which by the way I am totally in love with.

You will need:

Paper

Transparency paper

Bird Template

Scissors

Glue

Acrylic Paint

Step 1

To begin have your child paint with acrylic paint all over the transparency film. This is a great opportunity to practice color mixing - but remember only use two of the primary colors unless you want a brown sludge. For example yellow-red-orange or red-blue-purple or yellow-blue-green. Once you have painted a couple of films leave to dry completely - this might take overnight especially if the paint is thick.

Step 2

Paint a sheet of white paper in a solid color we chose red for our turkey but any color would work. Once your paper is dry take our template which you can find here and cut the shape that you would like to use.

Step 3

Once your painted transparency is dry cut lots of feather shapes out of it. If you have younger children you might want to do this for them. You really will need a lot of feathers to create one bird, try and cut the feathers so you get a range of shimmery color on each feather.

Step 4

Glue the turkey or peacock body to the center of the piece of plain paper. Try not to glue right to the edge of the body shape as you'll need to tuck feathers in underneath the edge in a minute.

Step 5

Begin by tucking in the feathers around the edge of the shape. I like to glue the feathers paint side down, this allows all the wonderful color mixing swirls to show through giving the feathers some texture. When you add the feathers be sure to overlap them slightly.

Once you have begun the first layer build up layers behind tucking the base of the feathers behind as pictured below.

Build up to fill all the space behind your turkey. When you run our of feathers give your bird a face - we used some sticker eyes and an off cut of the transparency film for a beak but really anything works - you could have you children draw on the face.