Kaohsiung American School: MS Art, HS Art and IB DP Visual Arts. http://kashsartdept.ning.com/

Hi Aimee, how are you?  I am so busy lately!  Hope you are doing well!  Can't believe is mid April.  Actually I am very new in mixed media too.  Keep trying and explore more with my students.  Here are some books I bought which gives me more ideas.  Maybe it can help you too.

1. Celebrate your Creative Self by Mary Todd Bean

2. the Creative Edge by Mary Todd Beam

3. Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista

By the way, your students' works are great!  All the works look so excited for me!  They must enjoy your class so much!  Hope see you sometimes in the future and we can share more ideas.  Are you going to the next year conference in Shanghai?  I am not sure now, but will see! 

You know believe it or not it is literally Elmers glue applied with an old thin brush. What I usually do is take the brushes that come with those tempera/watercolor sets and uses them as glue applicators because they are usually such crappy brushes for painting.

I have students apply a thin bead on the side of the paper or cardboard and then have them apply a super thin line of Elmers glue on the base where they have drawn a pencil outline. They do the "blow for 20 seconds" on the glued area after attaching the paper or cardboard. They can also use dulled masking tape as anchors while it is drying. The dulled masking is tacky enough to support without messing up the paper.

You know Elmers glue when applied in just the right amount really works well!

They then spray paint their sculptures, I show them how to spray it so as to control the drips as much as possible. I have tried applying acrylic paint on these but it wets the paper down too much and causing the walls to buckle. My dilemma has always been how to find a way to paint the sculptures that doesn't involve spray paint...

Hi Aimee, it just dawned on me that you are the same Aimee in Taiwan that put a comment on my Mandala Unit on my blog. How fun! Funny I formulated this unit at my first international school which served the Taiwanese expats in Bangkok.

I'm so glad you were able to use this unit, I love how you introduced color pencil and watercolor to them, your student's results are wonderful!! I was sharing with my husband last night, we were oohing and awing over them as well as your other student work.

Hi Aimee, so sorry for the late reply!!!  Long time I didn't check my page, by the way, thank you for your sweet comments!  The rubik cube project is work by the HS students, this is their final project in the mixed media class, they just try to apply all the techniques they have been learned and create their own image with the theme they like, of course a lot of conversation and discussion with my student in the beginning.

Basically, she has rubik at home, and she took the rubik became into a little pieces and take a lot of photos with different composition.  Then she print her favorite image in the normal A4 paper.  Then add the colors using color pencils and acrylic paint, and at the end you see the rubik seems look pop out with the interesting texture was, she used tar gel on some of the rubiks drawing surfaces.  ^_^