Suminagashi

I wanted to share a totally cool art project that I did with my son's 3rd grade class this past week.  It was inspired by the ancient art of Suminagashi which is a form of Japanese print making.  All of the projects shown were done by the 3rd graders! 

The process involves shaving cream so you can just imagine how much fun the kids had creating.

Place about an inch of shaving cream in the bottom of an aluminum tray.  Smooth it out with a straight edge and then choose three liquid watercolors and spray a stripe of each on top of the shaving cream.  Then take a skewer and draw lines through the colors/shaving cream.  Make sure that the lines intersect.  You can even do some swirly lines.  The whole idea is to make sure that the colors blend into each other, but not to do it so much that the colors become muddied.  Then place a 4"x6" piece of watercolor paper on top of the shaving cream and gently press down onto the top and rub gently.  Carefully lift off the paper and place on a spare paper.  Take a ruler and pull it across the watercolor paper to remove any excess shaving cream.

If you want to try to make another one, simply scrape off the color from the shaving cream and start over.  Keep in mind that you may have to add a little more shaving cream before you spray on different colors.  The results are gorgeous and what's even more fun is that no two ever turn out alike!

I hope you can try this out!  It's rather addicting!