We love mixed media art projects. Last winter, we made several mixed media artworks including a Christmas village, a snowy birdhouse and even a cute and cuddly little penguin. This year, we started our first, of I am sure many, Christmas projects with these adorable elf shoes. We say elf shoes, but the fun and focus is on the tights. Break out your paints, newspaper, markers and anything else you can think of and make your own cute and funny elf project.
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Supplies you might need:
Newspaper
Markers
Pom poms
Glue stick
We also attached a printable template for your convenience.
You can use our template or design your own.
There are so many design options that you could make. We made a few different mixed media projects ourselves. Here are a few. I started with a piece of watercolor paper and painted a background with watercolors. While the paint dried, I moved on to cutting out and designing the elf’s shoes and tights.
I cut a pair of elf shoes out red construction paper.
Next, I cut the fringe out of green construction paper.
I cut out a pair of elf tights and then a bunch of different strips of scrapbook paper.
The scrapbook pieces made perfect stripes for the elf’s tights. I laid the two leg shapes out next to each other and then glued different colored and patterned strips over both legs until the legs were covered.
When they were ready, I flipped the whole thing over and cut around the leg shapes to remove all the excess scrap.
When the paint was dry on the background, I cut a little bit of newspaper and used it in our background for a snowy mound. Then I glued all of the elf pieces to the background. Instead of cutting out the balls for the end of the shoes, I opted for pom poms.
My daughter made one as well. She did not use the printable, instead she drew her own elf shoes and tights onto a piece of plain white paper.
She colored her shoes in with a red Sharpie.
Here she is showing me that elf shoes can also double as a mustache.
She drew lines across her tights and then drew designs inside of them all. I loved this idea and followed suit right before she changed her mind and decided that she liked plain stripes better.
She used gel pens to color in each stripe. The bright and sparkly colors of the gels pens were very effective for this project and looked great.
When she mounted her pieces onto a piece of construction paper, she said her tights weren’t long enough and she extended her design to the top with the pens.
She finished off her elf’s shoes and tights and added a couple of Christmas ornaments to top it off.
I loved the idea of the Sharpie designs within the stripes of the tights, so I copied my little girl’s idea and made another too.
Newspaper is always great in these kinds of projects. Here is one more that we made as a team.
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