Tiny Homes with Natural Materials

For a recent Special Sunday The Studio’s two interns, Hannah Pancione (left) and Emma Rodrigue (right) worked together to design an activity for guests and documented their process and interactions. Here is their report on the day.

For our Special Sunday activity we were encouraged by Meghan to brainstorm ideas we both are interested in and art materials we enjoy working with. We both love being outside and are attracted to working with organic and found materials. As children, one of our favorite creative outlets was designing and imagining fairy homes. This project seemed like a perfect way to combine and share our interests!

Some of the materials we used to create this project were gathered and collected by members of The Art Studio. By the time our Special Sunday project rolled around, we had a wide variety of materials to work with.

We used everything from seashells, bark and pinecones to sticks, bottle caps and twine.   One of the only items we purchased was the wooden boards we used as a base to build our tiny homes. We used Masonite, as it was affordable, lightweight, and easy to work with. Once we had purchased a 12’ x 8’ board from Home Depot, we then cut it down into 6 “x 8” rectangles. It yielded approximately 85 pieces, which was plenty, even for our busy day with lots of guests. Any wooden board or thick scrap cardboard would work fine to make these at home.

Every guest was given one 6”x 8” board and a tray to fill with the items we collected and sorted. Once guests were finished gathering their objects, the brainstorming began!

Hot glue guns and tacky glue were provided to help secure the houses.

 Some chose to build small, others tall.

We had so much fun putting together this Special Sunday Project. It was exciting to see all the different ways people created their homes and how imaginative guests were with the materials.  We were delighted to see guests of all ages absorbed in the designing, creating, and building process!