How to Make a 3-D Collage from Nature Items

As a home schooling Mom, I take every opportunity to expose my children to nature. We frequently bring home trinkets and specimens that we found on those walks. Here's a fun way we mount those items in a three dimensional collage.

You can start by taking a walk outside, either around your home, or in a nearby park or conservation area, to collect specimens for your 3D collage. Make sure that you are in a place where it is okay to pick up small items and take them home with you. Some areas, (particularly national parks), forbid visitors to pick up any part of the landscape and carry it home with them.

Your collection should be of fairly small items, such as colorful pebbles or shells, seeds or seedpods, small twigs, a handful of dry moss, and other similar items. You can use this opportunity to teach your children about different types of leaves and flowers they're seeing, and about the kinds of trees and plants they come from. Be sure to take along a few empty sandwich baggies to put your collections in.

When you get home, start with a blank sheet of poster board or construction paper. Spread a thin layer of glue all across the paper. You can use a small paintbrush to smooth the glue around, so you get a nice even layer. Starting with the smallest objects, attach them to your paper. Our first layer was of local sand and silt particular to our region.

This first layer will be your 'base'. If you don't want any of your paper to show, this is the best time to add your natural background.

Once your background is in place, you can add additional glue for the next layer. The second layer shouldn't entirely cover your paper. Instead of spreading glue all the way across your paper, only place glue in the places your going to put the next layer of objects. For instance, our next layer was dried moss which we only wanted across about the bottom third of the paper.

Continue adding glue and layers of objects to build up your three dimensional collage. You can actually create a miniature landscape, using twigs to represent the trees, moss or leaves to create bushes and so on, or you can just arrange the items in any way that you find artistic.

Make sure you give your collage a chance to dry very thoroughly, so all that layers of glue are good and stable before you try to lift it up. Once it is completely dry, you will be able to hang it up without any danger of the objects coming loose and falling off.

Consider doing this project at the beginning of each new season. This gives children an opportunity to compare the items they find in their environment in the different seasons, so that they can see how the plants and trees around them change from season to season.

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