
Last year I tried out a bas relief sculpture lesson where the students cut and layered cereal box cardboard, covered with foil, and embossed. None of us were super into that lesson, but I couldn't get the idea of shrinking it down into jewelry out of my head. We can pretend they are sweat soldered pendants. :)
To introduce the lesson, we talked about why people wear jewelry and covered: fashion, status (rich, royalty, etc.), symbol (wedding ring), safety/protection (medical alert, St.Christopher's medal, etc.) and probably a few other categories that I could tell you had I written this in May instead of July. We looked at a few photos of jewelry online before I launched into a really quick description of relief sculpture, a basic demo, then the students got right to work. I had precut squares and rectangles all around 2 inches in size for the base, then had scraps from lots of other cereal boxes that the students used to make their layered designs. Before covering with a piece of foil, the students had to decide how their pendant would hang and punch a hole. After embossing, the students chose a piece of yarn and started modeling. Some early finishers were eager to make another piece right away.
This worked pretty well as a 40 minute project, but I would love to stretch this to 2 class periods to spend more time on history and design. I think most students would benefit from making a few thumbnail sketches and talking about which design is strongest before beginning construction.
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