Crushed aluminum foil wall art

Here's our prefect set of ingredients in the makings of a project.
  • Stay at home day
  • Bored kid
  • Blank wall begging for some decoration
  • Day before trash day
The culminating project was a crushed aluminum foil foliage wall art for the kids' bedroom.


It was so much fun to do with Big Sister. The parts she loved the most was crushing the foil and the gluing.

Read on for my step-by-step...




Here's all you need:

  • Aluminum foil
  • Black paper/board (I painted a stretched canvas black)
  • Cardboard carton/box (I used a recycled milk carton, available handy, thanks to 'day before trash day'!)
  • Pencil
  • Scissors
  • Glue


Start by tracing some shapes on your cardboard. since we were making flowers and butterflies, we drew rounded triangles for the petals, flattened hearts for the butterfly wings, leaves, etc.


Cut out the shapes. This gets a bit tiring and my hands cramped up after cutting up a few of  them. To make this job easier cut the cardboard in to smaller pieces around the shape, and then cut the outline from the smaller piece.


Now, cut aluminum foil into 2"X2" squares. (Or depending upon the size and shape of your cardboard cutout, make sure the piece of foil will cover the whole shape and then some.)


Ball up the foil. Don't crush it too much though.


Carefully unfold the balled up foil. I love this effect. Each piece is unique and has so many facets reflecting light at different angles, creating a shimmering effect.


Place the cutout on the non-shiny side of the foil and cut out the foil around the shape leaving about 1/3" to fold over.


Fold the foil around the cardboard and press firmly.


You have a shiny silver petal. Press on the shape with your palm, to flatten it out just a little bit.



Arrange and glue the individual shapes on black paper or board. We used a painted black canvas. This is a recycled item too in this project. The canvas was a painting experiment gone wrong, painted over with black.


 I love the effect the shimmering petals have on a black background. They 'pop'!



You may also cutout alphabets. But avoid 'L' right angles or sharp edges when possible because the foil will tear up at the bend. Instead, cut out different pieces and place them together. For instance, if you want to make an 'I', cut out one long rectangle, and two smaller rectangles and arrange them to make an 'I'.

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