PRIMARY SCHOOL ART classes were a chance to get messy, show off your enviable set of colouring pencils, and have a bit of fun.
If you were lucky, the finished works were put on the wall outside the classroom, where other students could marvel at your combined artistic talent.
But let’s face it now, years later – you weren’t Neil Buchanan, and often these priceless works of art were left to gather dust on a windowsill. A travesty!
1. Painted eggshells
For the season that’s in it.
The end result may have been cute, but let us not forget the disgusting job of blowing out the eggs’ insides first. Blurgh.
2. Pipe cleaner animals
The excitement of actually using pipe cleaners (like they did on the telly!) often eclipsed your love for the finished product.
3. Slightly blasphemous Easter/Christmas crafts
Toilet roll nativities! Paper plate Calvarys! It’s all fine, we were LEARNING.
4. Greeting cards for all occasions
Complete with lumps of glitter glue that never dried and came off on your poor mam’s good work clothes.
5. Paintings that revolved around your handprints
Tiny child hands + non-toxic poster paint = adorable keepsakes to cherish forever. Right?
Here you go, dad. Stick this brown-hued disaster on the fridge, I command you.
6. Papier maché balloon animals
It was messy, eminently frustrating, and lots of work with minimal return – but somehow, papier maché is considered the perfect activity for primary school children.
Of course, it was all worth it when you got to peel that gorgeous PVA glue/water mix off your fingers after. Ahhh.
7. Pasta photo frames
Hard to get wrong, and therefore perfect Mother’s Day present fodder.
8. ‘Pottery’
Lump of clay with a thumb-sized hole = a vase. TAKE IT, MAM. PUT FLOWERS IN IT.
9. Drawings that would haunt you for years to come
Shhh, you were young. You didn’t know.
10. ‘Stained glass’ masterpieces
These lent a reverent air to the classroom, but often met their fate in the kitchen window at home, where they were left to curl up, fade, and generally look woeful.
