Mini Bookworms and The Very Hungry Caterpillar collage

I'm really excited to be involved with Mini BookWorms - a new collaborative book review and activity blog. In June, author Eric Carle celebrated his birthday and so we are celebrating his works with an Eric Carle month. You can learn a little more about Eric Carle here, and if you have blogged an Eric Carle post or activity then please join in with our Eric Carle linky, or come over and have a browse for some fantastic ideas.

Whilst I was looking for some information about Eric Carle I discovered his own fab website, where he shares the way that he creates his distinctive collages. I thought it would be fun to have a go at making our own Very Hungry Caterpillar pictures.

It's really simple. Just take some large squares of tissue paper (I never buy it, so the stuff that I found is more than likely stashed packaging material from something). Then paint with slightly watered down poster paint. You can paint one colour at a time and build up the colours as they dry, or I put blobs of different colours together on a pallette (margarine tub lid) and let them mix as they are painted. I used two shades of green, yellow, and a small amount of blue. I also made a small square of red for the head, with a tiny bit of blue paint mixed in. Use bold brush strokes, and it doesn't matter if the tissue paper rucks up a little bit.

When all the painted tissue paper is dry you can begin your collage. We made two in slightly different ways. For mine, I cut out all the shapes that I needed freehand and stuck them down. For Harry's I drew him the outline of a caterpillar, then we cut up the tissue paper into little squares and glued them down inside the outline.

When they were dry we cut them out and re-mounted them onto thin cardboard. Then we finished them off by adding the final details with felt pen and coloured pencils - outlining in yellow and adding feet and feelers, then using pencils to make the hairs on the back. They were a bit bumpy, so I covered them with clear sticky backed plastic, and we made a simple frame for the smaller one. Making these pictures was so easy, and I'm really pleased with the final results!