Cherry Blossom's Pops of Color: Recycled Spring Activity in Black & White

I seem to be on a real kick with reusing magazine pages lately! This is a great activity but is tedious and takes a fair bit of patience. I helped even the older preschoolers glue all their edges down. This black and white spring craft's only pop of color is the blossoms on the tree, and it really pops!  *This can also be done with newspaper but will make your fingers black.*

Materials:
Cardstock Paper (any color, it will be covered with magazine clippings)
Glue stick
Old Magazines 
Scissors
Tissue Paper
Black Tempura Paint

Look through the magazines (ahead of time) and rip out any pages that are most white & black print, cut out off any colored parts. I found I needed twice as much black & white as I thought I would need.

Rip about 1/2 of the pages into fairly large strips, about 2"x2", take remaining pages and rip them into smaller pieces, maybe 1"x1". Divide the smaller pieces into two piles, set one aside.



Starting with the larger pieces, glue them into the paper. Take special care to get the glue on the edges of the magazine paper. It may seem easier to put the glue directly on the cardstock paper, just make sure you work in a small area, glue sticks dry very fast!




After you have applied the larger size of black & white paper, it should look kind of like this, next glue on the smaller one to fill in most of the spaces. You will probably have some tiny spaces leftover, and even if you dont, still take some of the remaining small pieces, and rip them up really small, this will give the background more depth!




 Turn over the finished product and trim the edges to make it look neat and tidy. Let the page dry for at least 15-30 minutes to make sure all the layers are dry. 

Use the black tempura paint to paint the child's hand and inner forearm. *Note* Do you not paint straight down from the write to inner elbow, paint diagonally toward the back of the elbow. Lay your arm down on the table and look at what part of your skin touches, you will see what I mean!

Use the hand and arm like a stamp, and stamp it into the page to make a tree. 

Let the paint dry completely. 

While the paint dries rip up pink tissue paper into small pieces (1-1.5") and roll it into balls to look like cherry blossoms. *I had light and park pink leftover from a little girl's birthday party. If you want it to be two-tone and cant find/don't have light and dark pink you could always use white and pink, or pink and red, etc, let your imagination guide you (man that sounds cheesey lol!).

Put dots of liquid school glue wherever you like a cherry blossom, we put them on the tree and on the ground. Next, place them on, randomly mixing the shades of pink. Voila!