Kid's Project: Beehive

Recently, we visited the Ohio State Fair where we saw a honey bee display, complete with the hive. Chloe and I decided to make our own beehive. Here's how we did it.

Chloe kneaded and rolled the Creative Paperclay® into a log to fit into our clay extruder. If you don't have an extruder, you can roll the material into a snake about 1/4" in diameter. We just like gidgets and gadgets, so we used the extruder :) We inverted a condiment cup to build the base of the beehive.

As I coiled the paperclay around the cup, Chloe painted the previous layer with water. This encourages the coils to bond to one another, and also smooths the material so no sanding is required. We used several coils, and joined the new coil to the previous one as we built the beehive.

When we reached the top of the condiment cup, we continued coiling, making the coils smaller as we neared the top. I left the condiment cup in place while the beehive dried overnight, and removed it the next morning for the remainder of the drying time.

When the beehive was dry, Chloe painted it with yellow ocher acrylic paint. When that was dry, we stippled the surface with a metallic gold acrylic paint. The bumblebee is attached with a pop dot.

For the bumblebee, I cut the bottom layer out of yellow acetate. Black vinyl on top of the acetate outlined the bee. I used white vinyl for the face, and yellow vinyl for the two stripes. Here are links for SVG and PDF files for the bumblebee: SVG Bumblebee    PDF Bumblebee

Carole	Chloe
Table Cell	Table Cell