How do you finish a collaborative group art project? Add the sparkle! Learn how to bring your collaborative artwork to life with the Bling stage.
In this episode of Easy Collaborative Art, I guide you through the Bling stage—the final step in the Pattern Play process. You’ll discover how to use paint pens, doodles, and shiny finishing touches to add fun details that transform your group’s painting without overwhelming it.
Whether you’re working with kids, adults, or mixed abilities, these simple techniques make it easy to celebrate everyone’s contribution and create something vibrant together.
What you’ll discover in this episode:
Links and Resources:
🎨 Read the full episode transcript: Episode 5: Bling! — The Final Stage
📘 Grab your free Beginner’s Guide to Collaborative Art
🎧 Podcast Home: Easy Collaborative Art
Below is a quick ‘How to Start’ guide for running easy collaborative art projects with special needs or neurodiverse groups.
Imagine you are a teacher, support worker, or group facilitator guiding a group of people living with intellectual disabilities, sensory differences, or neurodiverse needs through a simple, beginner-friendly group art project.
Here’s a process you might follow:
Step 1: Messy Playing
Begin with an open, sensory-friendly activity – painting on a large canvas pre-painted with a busy underpainting to reduce the shock of a blank white surface. Provide larger brushes and encourage participants to explore circles,dots, and dashes—both large and small—on different parts of the artwork. Participants can move around or you can rotate the canvas as feels right. Limit the colour scheme to two or three harmonious colours to keep it simple. Thisstage helps participants feel relaxed, engaged, and confident, while experiencing what collaborative art is: creating together rather than alone.
Step 2: Exploring
Once the background is lively with brushwork and colour, invite participants to add simple patterns or shapes using a medium-sized brush. Use my Pattern Play resources for them to copy ideas—this is how artists learn. Encourage layering and repetition, and demonstrate patterns clearly and confidently. Perfection is not the goal—a circle can be an oval or or a blob in shape.
Tip for facilitators: provide one brush size per layer and model each step visually. Simple instructions like “Do this:” (paint a circle) or SHOWING THEM how to swirl a circle into a spiral helps participants see how their marks matter and connect to the larger group art project while they practice and build skills.
Step 3: Bling!
Finish by adding decorative touches. Participants can use paint pens to add doodles and patterns once the paint is dry. Ask them to outline favourite shapes or march a row of ants (dashes) along a line. Stick-on gems, dot stickers, or even small additions like nail polish dots (sensory-safe with ventilation) addexcitement and help tie the artwork together. Move around the group to offer support and encouragement, highlighting contributions: “Look at what Mary did—so cool! Copy her idea over there in another colour, Paul.” This stageensures participants feel proud of their part in the collaborative artwork.
Tip for facilitators: if a participant is only able to ‘scribble’—that’s fine (we call this ‘spaghetti’). Simply play “Swapsies!” regularly with colours and keep turning the canvas.
This process shows teachers, support workers, and facilitators how easy it is to run beginner-friendly, inclusive collaborative art projects. It’s simple, fun, and a creative way for neurodiverse or special needs participants to connect through shared group art and self-expression.