sculpt a few tacos with papier-mâché

Finished papier-mâché pulp taco samples.

 

Brief Description: These tacos look good enough to eat. Save some clean tissues and bags from your real dinner some evening and wrap these up realistically for a little one to enjoy as a gift.

Supply List:

• sturdy paper plates
• newsprint
• brown paper bag
• masking tape
• white school glue
• red and brown acrylic paint
• soft, small paint brush
• papier-mâché pulp
• shredded yellow and green papers 
• Mod Podge

Directions:

1. Cut off the rim of the number of plates you will need to make a handful of mouth watering tacos. 
2. Crush some newsprint to sandwich between your faux shells and tape these in place.
3. Now layer shredded brown paper along with white school glue all over the surface of your taco shapes. Cover the surface completely. Always end with the surface being covered with the white glue. Set aside the taco shapes to dry overnight.
4.  Now prep the papier-mâché pulp according to the directions on the package. Spread it over the inside surface of the taco only to imitate the ground beef. Let this dry out; it must harden completely before continuing with the project.
5. Paint  papier-mâché pulp brown for ground beef and red for sliced tomatoes. Let dry.
6. Paste shredded paper to mimic shredded cheese and lettuce.
7. Add a layer of Mod Podge to the entire surface of all tacos to preserve the work.

Left, tacos start out looking something like this, but, Right, in the end look more like something you could eat.

Cute fake food crafts from GuideCentral.

handcraft your own artisan pizza

  I saved a real pizza box to store my pretend pizzas in.

Brief Description: These little pizzas are made entirely of paper. I made these samples for a child's kitchen playset. However, teachers may prefer to make larger versions for a fun classroom craft.

Six steps for making an artsy pizza.

Supply List:

• sturdy paper plates
• newsprint
• brown paper bag
• masking tape
• white school glue
• red and brown acrylic paint
• soft, small paint brush
• papier-mâché pulp
• shredded yellow papers 
• Mod Podge

Directions:

1. Crush a long narrow strip of newsprint to form the edges of your pizza using masking tape to attach it to the outer rim of your stiff paper plate. Mask the entire plate with the tape.
2. Cover the plate with white school glue and shredded brown paper sack paper. Cover the top layer of the paper with the same glue and let the pizza shape dray overnight. 
3. Prep the papier-mâché pulp according to the directions found on the package. Ad a very then layer of this to the top of your pizza's surface only. 
4. If you choose to make a sausage pizza, at this point you would need to make the surface of the pizza a bit lumpy with the papier-mâché pulp. Let the pizzas dry after this step. You may need to set them in the sunlight or near a warm air vent to speed up the drying time. Do not put them near an open flame! It may take a couple of days for the pulp to dry depending on the time of year or the climate in your environment.
5. After your pizzas have hardened, you may paint the "saucy" papier-mâché area with a tomato red acrylic paint and if you have a sausage pizza, use a brown acrylic paint to color the raised areas of pulp brown. I cleaned up the edges of the sauce a bit by adding more glue and brown paper where I didn't want the red paint. Let this dry; it shouldn't take long.
6. Drizzle the white glue on the top parts of the pizza where you would like to add cheese. I shredded several yellow papers in advance for this part of the craft. I used acid free papers because I wanted the colors of the cheese not to fade over time. You may use whatever paper you have at hand. Sprinkle the paper on top of the glue and add more layers of glue as you go. Finish the entire surface of the paper pizzas with Mod Podge at the end and let this dry. 

Here you can see up close the difference between the tomato sauce and the sausage on the surface of the pizzas.

Additional Suggestions: Try to shape all kids of veggies for you pizza with papier-mâché pulp and cut paper.

A great Pop Art pizza project.

• The cutest felt pizza toy ever!
• Cardboard pizza oven craft  
• Pizzah Rat

shape a dozen papier-mâché doughnuts

Finished papier-mâché doughnuts. Some young person will enjoy playing with these.

Brief Description: There are many people both young and old, who enjoy crafting fauve foods. Every students can learn to craft papier-mâché doughnuts with just a few inexpensive supplies. Many crafters will probably have the majority of these supplies already in their possession. 

       Crafted foods make unique little gifts for the young child who loves to play house or who likes to pretend to sell things in a play marketplace. Once you get the hang of sculpting these baked goods, try shaping even more of your favorite foods. Before you know it, you'll have a whole kitchen full of these low fat, delicious, baked goods to share with friends and family!

Supply List:

• brown paper bag
• newsprint
• masking tape
• papier-mâché pulp
• white school glue
• acrylic paints
• seed beeds
• transparent glitter
• soft, tiny paint brush
• tin container and plastic lid (cleaned and recycled)
• Modge Podge
  

Directions:

1. Crush newsprint into long cylindrical shapes.
2. Shape these into round refined doughnuts and then wrap the surfaces completely with masking tape.  (shown below)
3. Apply white glue to the surface of the masked confections with your fingers and apply shredded brown paper on these surfaces.
4. Let everything dry overnight. 
5. Prepare the papier-mâché pulp as the instructions on the package state. Now apply a bit of the papier-mâché to the top of each doughnut till these look frosted.
6. Let the donuts dry overnight again. 
7. Paint the papier-mâché different colors with the acrylic paints; let this paint dry.
8. Apply white glue or a tacky glue of some kind on top of the papier-mâché icing and sprinkle glitter or seed beads into the paste. Let it dry solid
9. Apply a generous amount of Modge Podge to seal the doughnuts.
10. After these dry, display them in a clean, dry recycled container. They make the perfect craft for little ones that like to play house!

Additional Suggestions: Your teens will love making papier-mâché food crafts giant sized. Hang these from the ceiling during a Pop Art unit/lesson.

These papier-mâché doughnuts are ready to ice and decorate.

Left, masked papier-mâché shapes. Right, papier-mâché
shapes covered with a layer of brown paper.

Larger papier-mâché doughnut pop art by the Electronic art room.

All instructions and photographs, templates are copyrighted by Grimm 2017