Spin Art Flowers - made by seniors with dementia

Today we had our craft time for residents with dementia at the retirement community.  Since we had paint and card stock left over from our Salad Spinner Art project I made up another craft to use up the supplies.  We made Spin Art Flower pictures.  This activity was quite challenging to some of the participants but they enjoyed the process and their finished pictures.  It took the seniors about 45 minutes to complete their portion of the project.

The first thing I did after the Salad Spinner Art project was make more paintings to use up the left over paint.  Then to prepare for the Spin Art Flowers I simply did the following:

1.  I used a scalloped circle paper punch to make lots of "flowers"  from the painted card stock.

2.  I used my little paper cutter to make little strips of paper for stems.

3.  I used a scissors to cut out leaves; some from the spin art and some from solid colored paper.

I took the above items to craft time along with a tablet of construction paper and some squares of clear contact paper that I had left over from another project.

Then the residents did these steps:

1.  Select 3 flowers,3 leaves, 3 stems and a sheet of construction paper for the background. 

2.  Peel the backing off of the contact paper.  Several needed help with this step.

3.  Place the flowers, leaves and stems on the contact paper with the colorful sides of the paper pieces touching the sticky side of the contact paper.
  I had to explain this several times and demonstrate how to do it.

4.  Turn the contact paper over and attach it to the construction paper backing.   Rub the paper with a fist to smooth it out.

5.  After step 4, I used my little paper cutter to trim off the construction paper that extended beyond the contact paper.

6.  Finally we punched holes in the upper corners of the pictures and attached ribbon hangers.  A couple of the participants were able to do this step by themselves.

Everyone enjoyed their results.

This is a great project for children too.

I used the contact paper for the project because I had it at home.  The good thing about doing the project this way was that the contact paper added weight to the pictures and made it easy to punch holes for attaching hanging ribbons.  The contact paper gives the finished piece a nice laminated look too.  I think this project would work well using glue sticks instead of contact paper.  The problem with using glue sticks with some of the seniors who have significant dementia is that the glue sticks are mistaken for lipstick.  When ever I plan a craft for this group I always make sure that all of the materials I use are non-toxic.