DIY Treasure Hunt Pictures

Make your own I Spy Treasure Hunt Pictures!

Alright, I make it a policy not to talk trash on this blog, but today I’m making an exception. (I have no such policy against bad puns, heh)

I love to do recycled crafts, so I was SOooo excited when I recently was offered the opportunity to work with Glad® Black Bag in their campaign to support Keep America Beautiful.  Glad has teamed up with The Picker Sisters and mosaic artist Jason Mecier for this effort:

Celebrated mosaic artist Jason Mecier will create four works of art utilizing people’s trash or “wild life remnants,” including items collected during Great American Clean ups from across the country, as well as items donated by celebrities.  These works of art will be auctioned off during the Glad® Black Bag art auction on eBay for consumers to bid on, from April 16 through April 26, with proceeds benefiting Keep America Beautiful’s Great America Cleanup.

When I took a look at the mosaic artwork available for auction, I loved it and wanted to try something  like it with my kids.  Um, obviously ours didn’t turn out exactly like Jason’s 😉  But that’s not the POINT with art anyhow. (By the way, check out Glad’s Facebook page for a great new trailer for their “The Wild Life” series, in relationship to this trash to treasure event.)

The mosaic work reminded the kids and I of the I Spy Books by Walter Wick. I decided we needed to make our own treasure hunts.

 Firsts thing- we had to hunt for treasures!

We grabbed our Black Bags and headed out for some yard clean up. (Bonus- an art project that *starts* with clean up.)

When we came in the kids went to play with Legos while rinsed off our yard treasures.  Then I searched the rest of our house for knick knacks and more trash that needed to be turned into treasure.

I dumped out treasure on the table and gave each person a canvas.

We each chose ten items that they KNEW would go in their I Spy treasure Hunt Picture.  I wanted to photograph these ahead of time so that I could print out an I Spy clue card later.

I photographed these items on the plain canvas background.

The we got started. Paint! Glue! Glitter and TRASH! Woo Hoo!

Actually it took a bit for my kids to decide this was fun.  It was hard to explain the concept of what we were making and they were flustered when faced with a table piled with trash bit, treasures and paint.  They grumbled as they got started, painting was fine, but what was it with the treasures?  Did they really want to give up these finds in the name of art?? 

And then my 7 year old realized he didn’t have to hang his art on the wall.
“Hey! Mine isn’t a treasure hunt! It’s a windmill garbage station.”

All of a sudden he was inspired and began chatting away about the story of his art as he glued and glued and glued…

 My four year old meanwhile had also become inspired when he saw the way he could stack items on to his painted canvas. He giggled as he glued on an army man and then requested that I find him a marble.

In between I worked on my RED Treasure Hunt.

SO MUCH FUN.      

Working on art with kids with recycled objects is great because no one is worried they’re ruining something, and the odd nature of the material sparks creativity and artistic problem solving.

Dinner time passed us by as we glued and painted. Finally we each finished our masterpieces, with only minor burns to show for it (we all agreed that the perils of glue guns are NOT our favorite part of this activity.)

{I love how different each of them came out!}

After completing the art (and, you know, eating and sleeping and all that jazz…) I uploaded the pictures I’d taken of our original objects.

In Picasa I edited the photos I had taken at the begining of the project so that I could print clue cards (they needed some lightening and had to be cropped to 4×6.) Then I printed a card to go with each Treasure Hunt Picture.

Now you can look at the card and see if you can find the treasures in the finished piece of art.

This was so much fun that I created a small objects bin to stash interesting finds so that we can do this again. Also I gained a WHOLE new respect for collage artists like Jason- seriously man, how callused have your fingers become?!

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Glad Black Bag and received a Glad Black Bag product, a craft kit and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.