Skill Level
Beginner
Time to Make
1 hour
Adult Supervision
Yes
Top Tip
Look at some different dinosaur shapes to create a collection of fossil designs for a class project.
How to Make
- Cut a piece of thick card from a cardboard box, approximately A3 size.
- Cut away the corners and sides into an irregular or zigzag shape for the rock background.
- Roughly draw out the position of the bones in the middle of the background.
- Draw a curve for the spine, then add the position for the legs and head.
- To make the 3D spine, first tie a double knot one the end of a 40cm piece of string.
- Next, begin threading beads onto the string until you have a 20- 25cm threaded length.
- Place the beads over the pencil spine to check the size, adding or remove beads if you need to.
- Glue the beads onto the background by applying the glue onto the card and pressing the string on top. Leave to dry.
- Draw a simple dinosaur head onto a polystyrene sheet. Cut it out, then glue onto the background.
- Cut more polystyrene pieces for the hip and pelvic bones, then glue in place on the background.
- To make thicker bone shapes, add another layer of polystyrene.
- Poke an eye hole into the head with the end of a brush.
- Glue more pieces onto the background to build up the skeleton shape.
- Glue short bamboo pieces for the thinner bones on the legs, ribs and the end of the tail.
- You could also use pieces cut from a drinking straw or macaroni and other pasta shapes. Use plenty glue. Leave to dry.
- To add more levels to the rock, cut out some simple shapes from the left over background card.
- Glue the card pieces around the dinosaur. Leave to dry.
- Brush PVA glue over the dinosaur and background then press some dark coloured tissue paper over the top.
- Use the glue brush to press the tissue down over the raised dinosaur and rock shapes.
- If the tissue paper splits, this can easily be covered with paint in the next step. Leave to dry.
- Fold and glue any overhanging tissue paper pieces over the edges of the background.
- Mix some grey paint for the background using mainly white with a small amount of black.
- Brush the paint around the dinosaur shape to cover the rock background.
- Use a small brush to paint in between he bones then leave to dry.
- Mix up a darker grey paint, quickly brush it over the rocks, then rub off with some paper towel, leaving some of the paint to highlight the rock texture.
- Lightly brush grey or white paint over the dinosaur to highlight the bones.
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