Soap Scrimshaw
What better time to study the frozen Arctic then when the snow is finally melting and the signs of spring are coming up? It makes perfect sense to us (but we are slightly odd people). As part of our Arctic study we learned about scrimshaw, a handicraft made be sailors out of bones and teeth of marine animals. We are really quite fond of marine animals and opted not to harvest their bones or teeth for our project. So, what does that leave us with? Soap of course (again, this makes perfect sense to us). To create her scrimshaw art, Doodle Bug chose an Arctic animal that she though might have been included on a true scrimshaw piece and since she's such a dog fan her chosen animal is the arctic wolf. Our soap carving was done with simple household tools - tooth picks, a butter knife and the occasional scissors point (when she thought mom wasn't looking). The sailors made their engravings pop using a pigment, which we thought would be sort of like ink or paint. After careful consideration of the mess factor of using ink we opted for paint. Once the carving was complete, Doodle Bug rubbed some black paint into her engraving and the wiped off the excess. The whole project took about an hour to complete, and makes a really cool addition to our unit study.
What better time to study the frozen Arctic then when the snow is finally melting and the signs of spring are coming up? It makes perfect sense to us (but we are slightly odd people). As part of our Arctic study we learned about scrimshaw, a handicraft made be sailors out of bones and teeth of marine animals. We are really quite fond of marine animals and opted not to harvest their bones or teeth for our project. So, what does that leave us with? Soap of course (again, this makes perfect sense to us). To create her scrimshaw art, Doodle Bug chose an Arctic animal that she though might have been included on a true scrimshaw piece and since she's such a dog fan her chosen animal is the arctic wolf. Our soap carving was done with simple household tools - tooth picks, a butter knife and the occasional scissors point (when she thought mom wasn't looking). The sailors made their engravings pop using a pigment, which we thought would be sort of like ink or paint. After careful consideration of the mess factor of using ink we opted for paint. Once the carving was complete, Doodle Bug rubbed some black paint into her engraving and the wiped off the excess. The whole project took about an hour to complete, and makes a really cool addition to our unit study.
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