Easter Fun – Home Crafting Mosaics

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Making activities are a big part of what we do at Hove Museum. As the museum is currently shut during the coronavirus lockdown, Louise Dennis shares some mosaic crafting activities that children can enjoy at home.

As you can’t visit Hove Museum this Spring to join in the usual arts and crafts, why don’t you enjoy some eco friendly craft ideas for all the family at home?

We have put together some handy steps and tips, using readily available materials, and have included some fun Easter resources for you to download too.

These activities are suitable for any age as your design can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. Very young children will enjoy the sticking, but will need help using scissors.

A small cardboard egg design made using homemade glue

You will need:

A selection of cardboard and paper recycling – cereal boxes, pizza boxes, magazines, flyers etc.
Clean, dry eggs shells if you want to use them in your mosaic
Scissors
Pencil
Glue (or use flour and water paste)
Your imagination!

Tweezers and/or cotton buds, a hole punch, tissue paper, sequins or other craft embellishments and coloured felt tip pens could be useful too, but are not essential.

To Make Flour and Water Glue

Mix 2 tbsp of flour with a little water to make a thick, sticky paste and spread it on – add your tiles and then let your work dry in a warm, dry place or carefully use a hairdryer.

Mosaic Collage Eggs

One of these eggs has been decorated using eggshells (some plain and some coloured with pen) as well as cardboard shapes. Eggshells are fun to use if a bit fiddly!

To start, cut out your egg shape from recycled cardboard boxes (and a backing shape if you’re making it into a card – see template below). If you choose the coloured side of the box to stick your mosaic tiles on to this will mean you have a plain side at the back to write your Easter message on, if you’re making a card.
Then cut up your cardboard or magazines into little pieces to make your mosaic tiles. It’s fun to gather all your colours into little piles. You could cut out pictures or text from your boxes as well as coloured shapes.

Notice the little coloured squares that can be found on cereal boxes and the ‘Wheatie’ pictures were fun to use too

As you do the sticking don’t worry if there are gaps as you can go back later and add in little bits if you need to

Spread some glue onto your egg shape and then begin adding your paper or cardboard mosaic tiles. It works well to glue first and then fit the shape together as you go, a bit like doing a jigsaw, rather than arranging a complete design and gluing afterwards.

Once the glue is dry trim any overhanging tiles

Once the glue is dry trim any overhanging tiles.

Here’s the finished egg! A spring scene

When you’ve finished you can make a hole in the top to hang it up as a decoration or affix a backing piece of card to the back to make it stand up as a greetings card. Here’s the front and back of a different design. This egg shape has been made into a card that stands up.

Mosaic Picture Design

You don’t have to make an egg – how about making a picture or a bookmark?

Tips

For this technique bold designs will work best, as you will need something that will translate easily into block shapes.
Once you start sticking try not to worry too much about following your pencil drawing exactly.
A design that places contrasting colours next to each other will work well.
For patterns and abstracts try choosing colours and shapes as you go, fitting them together in any way that pleases you.
The side panels of cereal boxes would make a good shape for a bookmark.
Cotton buds are useful for spreading glue and a cotton bud with a little glue on it can be used to pick up and place tiles into your design.