100th Day of School Butterfly Collection

Today is the 100th Day of School for my Kindergartner.  A couple years ago, her brother made this cool 100th Day Shirt.  My daughter decided she didn't want to wear her project, but wanted something she could carry and then hang up as a decoration.  This cute butterfly collection is what we worked on together and what she took to school today.

Aren't all those butterflies pretty? Look at this closer view...

Want to know the technique we used to get all those pretty swirls of color?  

Yes, with just some shaving cream and a little bit of acrylic paint, you can make this pretty marbleized paper.  It's a fun and slightly messy process with really pretty results.  

As you can see in the collage, you just spread some shaving cream on a tray, then add several drops of acrylic paint.  Swirl the paint through the cream with a toothpick, then lay a piece of cardstock (or other heavier weight paper) face down on the swirled paint.  Lift it up and the scrape off the shaving cream with a ruler.  Let it dry and then you're ready to go.  

You can see this post we did last year for the step-by-step details if you need them.

For our project, we used a butterfly paper punch to make our 100 pretty, swirled butterflies.

My daughter painted a piece of foamboard with blue sparkly paint, then added some swirls of a darker blue.   She rejected my suggestion to paint the background a solid color blue so the butterflies would show up better because she wanted the sparkles and swirls.  ("So it will look like the wind blowing!")

I helped her line up 10 different colored butterflies across the bottom and then she used glue dots to attach the rest of them in columns of 10 until all hundred butterflies were in place.

It was fun activity for us and turned out really cute.