Coil baskets

Along with the guitar lesson, the other one most asked about is the coil pot lesson. I got this one from the Dick Blick website, http://cdn.dickblick.com/lessonplans/paper-coil-baskets/paper-coil-baskets-paper-coil-baskets.pdf In years past, I had taught my students to make coil pots using yarn or raffia, but the students got very frustrated, with the yarn or raffia constantly coming out of the needle, and changing colors. This lesson ends the frustration. The paper coil is glued together with Weldbond Universal Adhesive, which I never heard of, but it is amazing! The lesson plan is very easy, although it tells you to use Inovart self-adhesive print foam for the bottom of the pot. You are supposed to cut a circle from the foam and use that to start the bottom of the pot, creating a "snail" from the paper coil and sticking it on the foam. I felt that the foam wasn't sticky enough for that, they kept popping off, so we tried with just gluing the "snail" as well, and not using the foam. It worked better for us. The children didn't have to hold the coils in place very long, which really surprised me, most got theirs done in 30-60 minutes. We let them dry overnight, and then painted them with liquid watercolors. Just a word of warning, the paper coil really sucks up the liquid watercolors! Embellishments could be added on, but we ran out of time.