We love creating a Mexican Marketplace in our school and including different items sold at the marketplace. Decorative mirrors are commonly found in Mexico at the marketplace and are usually made from tin with a mirror in the middle. My 4th grade students did a fantastic job creating radial designs on their folk art mirrors inspired by the ones sold at the market. Totally terrific! Totally fun!
1. Use 12″ x 12″ construction paper and a pencil, create a large circle or use a circle template. With a smaller circle template, we used a small paper plate, trace another circle inside the large circle. Add fun patterns around the circles.
2. Outline with a sharpie and color in the shapes with Crayola’s construction paper crayons. Make sure to fill in the shapes completely.
~MIRROR~
3. To make a mirror, use the silver side of 3″ x 3″ copper tooling and create patterns with a stylus or a pencil. Make sure you have a newspaper under the foil to pop the designs outward on the foil.
4. Glue down the mirror with tacky glue, then add sequins.
Display together or separately.
Make sure you follow along for more Art of Mexico.
Keep on Creating!
Laura
12 Comments
Darla Kendrick
October 24, 2016 at 5:07 pmIf copper tooling isn’t available. would aluminum foil be a suitable substitute?
Laura
October 24, 2016 at 7:11 pmYes, I would purchase the heavy duty foil. 🙂
Barb
May 8, 2018 at 12:07 pmThose are really beautiful!
Kristin
June 21, 2019 at 1:12 pmLove it. Great project for teaching radial balance! Thank you!
Candace
August 25, 2019 at 9:34 amDo you think 2nd grade is capable of doing as great a job as these? Yours came out beautiful. This is my 1st year and I think this would make a graddy lesson on line, shape, and pattern.
Laura
August 25, 2019 at 4:06 pmI would definitely try it out. Maybe use rulers for straight lines, buttons for circles etc. Happy Creating! 🙂
Sharee Peoples
October 12, 2020 at 4:40 pmGreat love the pictures I did them they are great and a good project for your students.
Sharee
October 12, 2020 at 4:42 pmSame here they are great!!!!!!!!!!!
Corrie
November 17, 2020 at 7:38 amLaura, In your video you talk about templates or stencils, are those here somewhere? I know in the directions (and can figure out) to use something to trace around, but just curious if they were here and just hiding. I can’t wait for my artists to try this!
Laura
November 17, 2020 at 4:37 pmHi Corrie, I just had the students use butter lids and paper plates for templates. 🙂 It helped with eliminating frustrations of creating a circle.
Christy
September 11, 2021 at 9:05 pmQuestion which time period would you say the began making items like these for the market places…. ? Our art program goes along with different time periods… right now we are in ancient….
Laura
September 12, 2021 at 9:53 amI would connect it to Aztec and Mayan. 🙂