Sometimes art is minimal ... sometimes art is two-dimensional ... and sometimes art is a wonderful, exuberant 3D expression of creative weirdness painted orange.
To keep with the maximalist, colorful, 70s theme of Niki Demar's apartment makeover, we created this wall art that incorporated everyone's favorite art class pastime — paper mâché — with bubbly balloons, bright orange paint, and a playful mixture of shapes. Check out the tutorial below!
Prep It!:
Canvas
Balloons
Newspaper
White glue
Water
Scissors
Hot glue and glue gun
Paintbrushes
Three shades of orange paint
Do It!:
- To create the paper mâché, mix together 2 parts white glue and one part water. Saturate strips of newspaper in that mix.
- Blow up balloons to various sizes and coat the bottom half of them with the paper mâché strips. Don't worry about getting any perfect edges, since they will be trimmed once dry!
- When your paper mâché bubbles have hardened, pop the balloons and remove them from the shell. Trim the edges of the bubble to be about as even and flat as possible, so as to lay neatly on the canvas.
- Glue around the trimmed edge of the bubbles and place them onto the canvas. Glue some around and off the edges, as well, so the art doesn't feel perfectly rectangular!
- I created some other shapes with paper in between the bubbles, so take the opportunity to flex both your creativity and your weirdness with additional shapes!
- When everything is glued to the canvas, paint the bubbles (and additional shapes, if you added any!) with the three colors of orange paint. Paint the canvas space in between as well, so the entire art is a bright hue.
- Let your art dry, and hang on the wall! I created a few bubbles to hang on the wall to appear as if they're drifting off the canvas for a whimsical touch.
