These nature sculptures were an absolute delight to create with the kids. They loved the open-ended process of “Make whatever you want.”
My son of course also likes the fact that he is now old enough to use the glue gun! He will stick anything to anything… for hours!!
We enjoyed walking through the forest and collecting all sorts of things to create with. At the end of the day, we ended up using pinecones, sticks, and a stone or two. Such simple materials yielded such beautiful results!
Once we had created our sculptures we painted some. Others we left natural.
A combination of painting and drip painting was used to paint the nature sculptures. We recently painted these pinecone flowers using a drip paint technique. They turned out beautifully!
Nature sculpture materials:
- A glue gun or fast sticking strong glue. If you enjoy crafting a glue gun like this one is a must!
- Paints. We used a combination of normal and neon paints. The neon paint gave the natural colors such a boost!
- A selection of collected items to sculpt with. Anything you can find would be lovely. Even though we did not use everything we found glass, pinecones, sticks, stones, leaves, acorns, shells, bark, and a coconut shell.
How to guide an open-ended activity like this one:
- Set up everything you need to create with.
- Make sure that everything can be seen and selected.
- If you are worried about the mess, make sure you add a newspaper or a cloth to the surface you are going to be working on. You, therefore, do not have to interfere with the “artists at work” later on to say be careful, or please don’t mess.
- Explain the objective of the activity well. Try not to define a result or desired outcome. The objective is to create and to make anything you want.
- If you have more than one step explain carefully where you would like to get to first and then explain the next step. We first make our sculptures. When they were 100% complete we painted them.
- Explain how the tools work if you need to. Explain the safety around the hot glue gun.
- And then have fun!
I could have spent all day making these with the kids! I loved the forms and colors! So simple and so beautiful!
We would love to see your own creations! You are always welcome to post on our Instagram or Facebook.
We love using natural materials and have often ended up in the forest or garden looking for things to “make stuff.” Here is a collection of fabulous nature crafts.
If you like sculpture, try this stick and string sculpture!
