Primarily Art with Mrs. Depp: Project Peeps

Moved back to a newly renovated school. We ALL got new laptops and that meant I got the empty BOXES!!!! Enough for one grade level.........

and there's additional goodies inside the box........ OH MY!!

Gonna save the insides for other projects.

Sooooooo I had been racking my brain for ideas in which to use those boxes with my 4th graders. Finally decided to let them do a 3D landscape. Then all of a sudden, with Easter right around the corner, the Peeps arrived!! AND I remembered the Peeps dioramas. Google Peeps Dioramas and you WILL be amazed! Not sure when I became aware of the concept of making a diorama using Peeps. The Washington Post has an annual contest, as do other newspapers. When I was in Texas for the NAEA conference it was in one of the local papers. however, I have no plans to use actual Peeps as I'm concerned about attracting ants.

Anyway several themes came to mind: birthday party, favorite book, bedroom, zoo, holiday celebration and TV shows. AND that's when I decided to do a Peeps version of Project Runway!

Here are the steps to transforming my empty box.

Measured and cut cardboard for the runway. Gathered up colored construction paper for dressing up the rest of the box. I did use Smart Fab for the curtain, basically because it's see through.

Created the shadowed Peep for behind the curtain. Since I'm using bunnies for this, I decided to make it appear as if it was in the forest. Glued down green paper for the base. Cut toilet paper rolls to create seating for the judges. Made bench seating for the contestants from cardboard.

To make the judges seats I cut out part of a toilet paper roll. Then I made a tree pattern for texture.

I like to spread out the glue with my finger, it just works better that way. I cut out circles for the seats and tabbed them to fit them into the TP rolls.

Looked through these books for inspiration:

And in case you're wondering as to how I had all this time to work on this box.......well, I'm on medical leave. I will be having surgery this week and will then need 10-12 weeks to recover. That basically means I'll possibly return with 4 days left to the school year............ yeah, not happy......
So will the 4th graders actually get to make this? No clue. I keep telling myself there's always next year........

Here's the before: