When researching for our space unit, I came across this fun tutorial on Pinterest and knew the girls would love to do it. It’s super simple, a little messy, and I love exploring new mediums when creating art.
All you need is:
A pencil to trace circular objects for your planets ( I used a plate, lids, candle, etc.)
Cardstock (you definitely don’t want anything thinner)
Scissors
Paper plates
Shaving cream (bought from the $1 store)
Something to mix with (we used a chopstick, but the end of a paintbrush would work)
Paint, we used this kind –
Once you cut out all your planets, squirt some shaving cream to the base of a paper plate. Smooth it out some so it isn’t too thick. Then add your paint.
Instead of just mixing the paint in, I told the girls to make lines with the chopstick, creating a more “marbled” look.
Once we were happy with how well the paint was mixed, we placed the cardstock right on top of it and smushed it down on all sides to make sure it was well covered.
Carefully picking it up, we laid it down to dry. The thicker it is, the more texture/air bubbles you’ll have as an end result. It will also take longer to dry. We reused the shaving cream a couple times, adding a new color or two to give other planets a slightly different look.
If the shaving cream doesn’t quite cover all the paper, or it’s too thick, feel free to smooth it out with your chopstick.
We accidentally painted Jupiter bright blue and decided to repaint once it was dry. We mixed a base tan color on a paper plate and covered most of it, then added shaving cream and paint right on top of it to create “stripes”.
The sun was the hardest to do because it was too large to use a paper plate. I thought adding the shaving cream and paint right on top would be fine because we didn’t have an issue doing that with Jupiter. Once the shaving cream dried on the sun, however, it flaked of reeeeeally easily. If I did it again, I would add a base color, like Jupiter had, to make it adhere a little better.
Once all the planets were painted and dried for 24 hrs, we glued them to our poster board to create a window for our space ship mission control board.
The girls loved making these!
Want more ideas for your space unit? Check out:
Space ship mission control board
