Tissue Paper Art

1st grader

 One of my students "stumbled" on this idea.  I had a model of a tissue collage on the white board but it had a white background and was mounted on black construction paper.  Not knowing the white background was necessary for the colors to be brighter, the student only used the black as a background.  Without the white background, the colors don't come through as brightly but the black background created a very interesting look.

2nd grader

The process I followed for this project is simple.  Students get a piece of construction paper (black) but I traced a black square (8x8) onto the larger black paper.

  I tell the kids to put their tissue paper within the traced boarder AND just beyond.  Using a paint brush to apply the glue (in decoupage fashion) once all the black within the square is covered, let it dry. 

3rd grade

Next, using the paper cutter, I cut the artwork into the 8x8 square leaving a very nice smooth edge to it.  That gets mounted on purple (leaving just a small edge) and that in turn gets mounted on black (again leaving a small edge).

4th grade

I press these using small individual white board and place a heavy object on top.  The way I pressed them was to just pile them one on top of the other with a white board separating each piece of artwork.  The pressing is necessary to flatten out the projects as the initial gluing warps the paper a bit.  But after pressing, the art projects lay perfectly flat.

5th grade

I hope this makes sense.
If not, please let me know and I'll clarify. 

Here is a small gallery of other examples of this project.