Save Those Holiday Catalogs!!

Is your stack of holiday catalogs growing by the day as your favorite stores compete for your patronage?? I just hate to throw these glossy gems away because you never know when inspiration will strike and you absolutely MUST have a picture for your wonderful idea! That is how this began.

There I was watching TV the other night with this pile of catalogs right next to me. There were photos of lots of baubles that I would never buy, but I might just put them to good use.

So, I cut out some jewels and got to work.  I followed the idea you have probably all seen bouncing around the WEB these last few years (like here and here). I glued my photo in the center of my paper. Before drawing my contour lines around the outside, I put dots at critical points where the lines would "bump into each other."

 Then came the lines:

 Next I picked pairs of colored pencils for each section. I tried to pick colors I could find in the actual photo.

Pressing hard where the lines joined and hardly at all at the mid-point creates a 3-D illusion. Pressing hard and light to create VALUE is a skill that most kids have to actually be taught and this is a good way to practice.

Here is one more using different colors:

This would be a good winter vacation activity for when kids say, "What can I do now?"