3D PAPER SCULPTURE LESSON

To start the year with my high school craft classes, I teach a unit on making paper sculptures.  I love demonstrating all the ways I have discovered of manipulating, folding, twisting, curling and changing the shapes of plain, everyday paper.

This year I made the word "PAPER" as I demonstrated some of these techniques.  I think the letter 'E' is my favorite and was created by folding little strips of paper similar to quilling.

My Paper Sculpture Bulletin Board

When I decided to dive back into regularly updating my blog, I knew I wanted to include a lot of my most popular art lessons.  I am often asked for copies of my handouts so I have also included a downloadable PDF of some of the handouts I use during this unit. Feel free to share and change this to suit your needs.  There are also a lot of great, online videos. 

Over the years, I have collected quite a few supplies that I provide for students during this unit.  A few years ago, a scrapbooking friend of mine passed away and her family donated a lot of her paper punches to my class.  (Thank you, dear Lori!) And I continue to purchase new punches each year.  I especially like having basic geometric shaped punches.

I also used some grant funds and purchased a classroom Cuttlebug machine that embosses papers.  We use this gizmo all year long for many projects and my students have access to it to dress up reports and assignments from other classes.  If you want to know more about this addictive machine visit - Cuttlebug Information

This is the handout I give my students at the beginning of the unit.  You can find a PDF version to download here - Link to PDF for download

Some of my favorite student work from this year