I Am SHERLocked: Sherlock Program/Party Ideas

After the success – and fun – of my Doctor Who program, I decided to have a Sherlock themed program.  Pop culture is a great programming tie-in.  For Sherlock, I am doing some hands on forensic science projects as well as some crafting projects.  The forensic science themed projects can be found here at my CSI program outline. I think the game of observation – where you ask teens to examine a “scene” and then recall what they have noticed – is especially fitting for a Sherlock program.  In addition, I will be doing the craft activities below.

Bottle Cap/Marble Magnet Quotes

Look, I am not going to lie.  I am a big fan of Marble Magnets and Bottle Cap jewelry.  You can make the individual pieces however you want, which means you are encouraging teens to be creative.  And in the case of the bottle caps, you can then string them onto cord with beads and make unique pieces of jewelry (or keychains, etc.).

The basic info for making Bottle Cap Jewelry can be found here. 

And here is the basic info for making Marble Magnets. 

And here are 50 things you can do with Bottle Caps.

You can download this sheet here

I put together a template of some inserts that teens can use to make their bottle caps/marble magnets.  But they can always make their own.  And you can also take an ink pad and they can make their own fingerprints.

Spray Paint Smiley Face Art

Materials: Blank canvas, various scrapbook paper, yellow spray paint, Mod Podge

Fans of the BBC Sherlock will recognize the distinct wall paper with a spray painted smiley face dripping down it.   So I created my own version using wallpaper (aka scrapbook paper) that would better fit into my personal space.  So give tweens/teens a wide choice of papers to match their rooms.  Then, glue it onto your canvas, giving it time to dry.  Use your yellow spray paint to make your dripping smiley face (this was harder than I would have thought).  Again, give it time to dry.  Then I used stickers to decorate and add quotes.  After it is all dry, apply a layer of Mod Podge over the top and give it time to dry.  You could also do a skull picture onto wallpaper if you choose.

Silhouette Pictures

Materials: A discarded book you don’t mind tearing apart, a blank frame, white paper, a black Sharpie

The Sherlock silhouette is an iconic image.  You can turn your teens into silhouettes and let them make their own pictures (more on this below).  I used pages of a book for a background.  I had extra picture frames lying around from another craft and we are coloring them with Sharpies.

Below is information on how you can create your own silhouette pictures.  I turned a picture into a black and white image and adjusted the settings as far as I could.  I then printed the picture, cut it out, and colored it with a black Sharpie.  Tape it down onto a new sheet of paper making sure you completely cover the edges and you get a crisp black silhouette.

After being colored and recopied

 Here is a great tutorial from this post at About.com

“You can pull characters from stock photos or your own pictures. All you do is separate the character from the background and then color the person with a solid color. This approach is effective because you can shoot your own photos and not worry about lighting and getting the best image. As long as it is clear and has the right pose, you’re fine. Once it’s filled no one can tell what the original looked like.

• Open the photo in a graphics editor.
• Pull the person out of the background.
• Fill the character with black and save the image.

Tip: If you want a transparent background with the image make sure to save as .gif or .png. You don’t need a fancy graphics application to do this. In fact, I did this demo in Paint.net which is a free download.” Source: About.com

You can see a photo montage of a teen doing their silhouette on the Tumblr: http://teenlibrariantoolbox.tumblr.com/post/72490546309/this-teen-just-turned-himself-into-a-sherlock

Some other Silhouette Tutorials:
HGTV: How to make a framed child’s silhouette
SITS Girls: Uses paint (I substituted paint for a black Sharpie to cut down drying times)
Bower Power: Photoshop Tutorial

You could also just use silhouette images of Sherlock and Watson found online.  That’s what I used in my example craft.

Filed under: Bottle Cap jewelry, Canvas, Crafts, Marble Magnets, Sherlock, Teen Program in a Box, Teen Programming, TPIB