Pizza! Pizza! Papier-mache Pizza!!

My DragonWing Arts students are in the midst of making all sorts of delicious creations with various types of papier-mache.  There's the pizza slices pictured here, plus donuts, slices of cake and pie, and ice cream sundaes!  The pizza slices were the easiest to make and therefore are the first to be done, so I thought I'd share them with you today.  In the coming couple of weeks, we will be painting the cakes, donuts, and ice cream, and I'll be sharing them here too. 

I started by cutting out a couple of large circles from some chipboard, but any cardboard would be fine.  I cut them into slices, and each student made one slice of pizza.  I'm thinking, for our end-of-session art show, that I'll either find a large pizza box that will fit all 8 slices (I have 8 students currently), or a bunch of small ones, to display the pizza. 

The kids started by building an edge of crust on the back of their slice, with a rolled up and crumpled piece of tin foil that was taped on to the cardboard.  Then, some thickness was added to their slices, with a layer of Celluclay.  It was my first time using Celluclay, but I did not care particularly for it, especially for the poofs of dust when I mixed it up with water.  Yuck!  Next time, if I want some textured papier-mache, I'll go back to simply using an old favorite, a mix of shredded paper and Art Paste.  Its easy to make, dries rock hard, and isn't dusty!  And costs WAY less than Celluclay, which we also used on our cake slices, that I will blog about when complete.  I got these wonderful foil trays at 3 for $1 at the dollar store, and each student stored all their papier-mache pieces on their tray. 

I didn't particularly care for the texture of the dry Celluclay, so we dipped pieces of toilet paper into mixed Art Paste and put a layer of it on top of the Celluclay.  It very much mimicked the texture of gooey stretchy cheese. 

When the papier-mache was totally dry, it was time to make toppings and paint.  Toppings of pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, olives, pineapple, bacon, etc were all cut out of felt, and stuck into the wet paint as we painted, so that 'sauce' and 'cheese' sometimes got on top of the toppings.  We use acrylic paints on papier-mache for a nice permanent finish.  A variety of yellows, browns, oranges, reds, and light tans were pre-mixed and the kids then used whichever colors they wanted, and mixed them as desired, too, so some cheese and/or crusts looked a little more 'well done' than others!

The boy who made this slice insisted he wanted no toppings, because that's the way he likes to eat his pizza, and he purposely 'burned' his crust!

Below, a pizza slice is topped with pineapples, olives, mushrooms, red and green peppers, and some fresh mozzarella.  And another well-done crust!

Below, a very saucy pepperoni pizza!

The boy who made this pizza below was being pretty goofy.  He wanted to put liver on his pizza, but in the end, I think he made mushrooms instead, and added sauce and cheese to his crust.

The kids were enjoying 'eating' their pizza slices!

I'm afraid, with all my demonstrating, my sample slice (below) looks like its been re-heated in the toaster oven one too many times.  It's cheese looks rather dried out!

Below, some of the finished slices.  Now they will be set aside until we properly display them in our 'art show' during the final class of the 8-week session.  All-in-all, it's an easy and fun project, and if you are scared of papier-mache, a project like this is an easy way to get your feet wet!