Thursday, September 29, 2022

How kids can quill a jack-o-lantern picture...

The finished Halloween picture, with quilled
3D jack-o-lantern.
        Learning to quill with construction paper is much easier than it looks. This cute little jack-o-lantern is made up of dozens of rolled construction paper strips glued within a pumpkin shaped outline. I've featured him here on top of his own construction paper fence. Little ones may also add more "spooky'' spider webs to their Halloween picture once the paper quills have dried.

Supply List:

  • ample supply of orange, construction paper, shredded
  • white acrylic paint or white pencil
  • black marker
  • black paper for background, brown paper for fence, green for leaves, brown for stem, red for pumpkin background
  • white school glue

Step-by-Step Instructions:

  1. You can either cut strips of construction paper by hand or use a paper shredder for the craft if a large number of students are making this project. In either case you will need to make the strips of paper approximately 1/2 inch in width and the remaining length of the paper you have on hand. Not all quilling is regular, especially when teaching little kids. I intentionally made this sample using irregular cuts of paper and I think is looks very cute.
  2. After cutting the paper in strips, wind it around a pencil, remove it and then roll it between your finger tips. Squeeze is tiny bit of glue onto the end of the paper roll in order the get then ends to stick and hold the quill in place. Now repeat this step many times until you have enough quills to glue on top of a larger picture and make a design. 
  3. An important thing to remember while working on this project is that it takes some time to complete and that the glue must dry before the quills will even remotely adhere to the background. Be Patient!!!
  4. I cut out strips of brown construction paper for the fence and also used brown strips for the quilled pumpkin stem. 
  5. Use a black marker to draw "wooden" veins in the fence if you'd like.
  6. I quilled green for the leaves, pinching the ends to make an oval shape. (see details below)
  7. Then I quilled jack-o-lantern facial features using black paper and glued these on top of the orange quills.
  8. After the construction paper dries, use a white pencil or paint to add spider web details to make a scene like the one show here.

Details showing what the rolled or quilled construction paper looks like when finished. 

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