Freezer paper stenciling

In November, in preparation for our Craft Social, I tried freezer paper stenciling for the first time. I didn't experiment with many fabrics so I can't say whether my less-than-perfect results were due to the fabric type or due to my tendency to apply too much paint. Maybe both.
Above are bags we gave to our kids' cousins for Christmas. My kids helped choose the images and paint colors, but I did the cutting, ironing and painting.
Also above is a bag I made for my sister. We're Seinfeld fans so I painted on a quote that I thought would be funny when remembering the context and appropriate for grocery shopping (although I don't know if she uses it in that capacity or not). It was fun to make but definitely tedious in cutting all those letters. I probably should have re-ironed it before taking a picture.
If you've never tried freezer paper stenciling but would like to, here's a tutorial to get you started. I would just advise that you use a pretty smooth fabric and enough paint to fill out your stencil without over applying it. Maybe a onesie with a stenciled shamrock is in order for St. Patrick's Day? Everything's cuter on onesies.

Watercolor initials

I tried this watercolor project with some of our preschool kids (age 3) recently and it went over really well. It doesn't take long to prepare and the kids were able to focus on it long enough to create pretty finished pieces. It's nice to have a simple activity that turns out such a nice frame-able picture, too.
I saw it first here at Blissful Kids. For ours, I printed each child's initial from the computer on an 8 1/2"x11" piece of paper. I held the paper on top of a piece of clear contact paper and cut around it. I peeled the back off the contact paper and stuck the initials on sheets of watercolor paper before class. The children painted their paper with watercolor paints and were surprised and pleased to find their initial staying white in the middle of the page. I let the paint dry before peeling off the contact paper letters.
Great for hanging in your child's room.

Nature themed morning

Today at our homeschool co-op, the preschoolers participated in nature themed activities. It was a gorgeous day to do so.
We began with God's story of creation from the Bible then moved outside to do some exploring and collecting. I prepared a scavenger box for each child in advance, knowing we wouldn't have time for the children to design their own. I labeled ours "Color by nature scavenger box." You can find these boxes described in multiple places online, but the basic idea is: paint your egg cups with a variety of colors and place your (small) found object in its corresponding cup.
We were able to find several dandelions and tried painting with them-actually pressing and rubbing the flower part onto the paper. They do make a nice yellow color on white paper. We used many of the other items for gluing onto collages.
The kids used tempera to paint some large smooth stones I'd picked up at the beach last summer. I love seeing the pretty rock my son painted so I'll probably pull out the rest of our collection and have my daughter paint some.
The kids were duly impressed, and slightly confused, by the dirt cake we had for our snack. This has been around for so long, but it's always a treat to serve it to a child who has never seen it before. I layered it in a lined pot and stuck a flower in to do the dessert justice. We also sliced apricots, apples, pears, and an orange and compared the seeds from each fruit.
It was a nice morning.

Glow-in-the-dark constellation paintings

Today at Blissful Kids, I'm sharing a painting/sewing activity we did this week with our preschool co-op. It's a good one for hanging in your child's bedroom as it appears one way during the day and another way at night. Come and see!

Painted picture frames

My husband had a good idea for holiday gifts from the kids this year. Hand-painted picture frames. This is really such an easy project and so cute. We simply had the kids paint their frames, but you could also glue on painted shapes, letters, etc. The unfinished frames were super cheap at Michael's and come in a variety of sizes. Just go to town with the acrylics, coat with gloss medium and insert your babes' faces. Voila! A nice homemade gift for family or friends for any occasion, really.

Cut, squirt, spin

Those are your basic instructions for completing these great spun art paintings. This is one of the easiest and most attractive painting projects we've done. I found instructions here (via The Crafty Crow). I read them one day, recalled them several days later during a moment of great conflict and within about 5 minutes found myself enjoying peace and pretty paintings. Here's what we did.
I traced the bottom of the basket from our salad spinner (yes, the one we use-the washable paint came out fine) onto construction paper, cardstock, and cereal box backs. I cut out the circles. My children (and I, because it really was fun) placed them inside the spinner, one at a time, and squirted in some washable paint.
We spun the spinner.


We marveled at our paintings and removed them from the basket to dry.
That's about it. Except to say that after several paintings, I scraped the excess paint out of the spinner bowl into a glass measuring cup and used that as an additional color for the next group of paintings.
Now, if you want to get carried away like I did, keep reading.
After the paintings dried, I painted over them with acrylic gloss medium. This intensifies the color (construction paper, especially, is particularly dull), gives it a nice shine, and protects the paint.
Then I experimented with how to display the paintings. I liked simply taping them to string, ribbon or yarn and hanging them as garland.

I also liked hanging them in mobile fashion. The ones you see here would be hung flat up against the wall since the paintings are not double-sided, but you could glue or tape yours back-to-back and hang in space.
For these, we painted paper towel rolls and I cut 3 little holes down one side. I poked some yarn through and knotted it inside the tube. I just taped the yarn to the back of each painting, then strung a long piece through the top to hang.

This style of painting is fast, fun, and almost mess-free. Win-win-win.

Metal Tooling and Father's Day: Not For Daddy To Read!

Yesterday we attempted Mexican Metal Tooling. This is a really fun and unique project. I think children older than mine will enjoy it more and could turn out more complicated and colorful designs, but mine did help create this nice little hanging for their daddy's office.

I love the look of the added beads on these other great examples of metal tooling (here at Pepper Paints via The Crafty Crow and here at Kinderart), but we thought it was a little much given the limited display space of a cubicle. Maybe another time.

See those sites for easy-to-follow tutorials for making your own metal art.

Note: We included foil circles created by tracing around a tin can and added the foil banner at the top to customize it for Father's Day. Our subject matter includes meaningful images relating to my children and their personalities or experiences with their dad.

Flour painting at the pool

My kids enjoyed our backyard painting enough that they asked to do it again. This time, we (my mom and I) changed things up on them a little by having them make their own paint first. We used a recipe from First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos by MaryAnn F. Kohl. I am pleased with our results, but struggled a bit getting them. I'll share the recipe as it's written in the book and then our modifications.

Flour Paint
flour

liquid soap

water

measuring spoons and cups

spoon

bowl or large jar

food coloring drops or paste, or powdered tempera paint

Combine 3 cups (375g) flour, 2 tablespoons (30ml) liquid soap, and 3/4 cup (180ml) water in a bowl or large jar until the mixture is a thick paste. Mix in food coloring until a desired shade is reached.

I assumed "combine" meant stir it up with a spoon. (Oh yeah, the recipe says "spoon.") But I found combining with a spoon left the mixture way too lumpy. I preferred using an electric mixer.

Also, the suggested amount of soap and water was not enough liquid to even make thick paste. I added quite a bit more water and some more soap. Wish I could tell you how much, but I tend not to keep track of those things.

After finally getting the mixture to my desired consistency (never really knowing what the intended consistency should have been), we divided it up into muffin tins to dye with food coloring. This worked really well.

After making our paint, we carried our supplies to the backyard, taped some paper to our little tables and began painting. The kids painted with little brushes, big brushes, and hands. They painted on children's painting paper, newspaper, freezer paper, and of course, their bodies. All paintbrushes, fingers, and other random painted body parts were frequently rinsed in the wading pool, making me think I'm now too spoiled by the convenience to ever paint indoors again.

This was a lot of fun, but I'm still puzzled by the paint recipe. Has anyone used this before?

Poolside potting, painting

The last few days it seems our activity center has been the wading pool in my parents' backyard. It has been used for swim-play, of course, and has been used simultaneously with potting and painting.

The kids enjoyed standing in the pool while potting flowers. Then took frequent pool breaks between brushstrokes while painting. And when their watercolor on paper transitioned to watercolor on bodies (theirs and ours), the pool proved useful for rinsing.

We're taking advantage of the gorgeous weather while we can get it!

Top picture: Notice my son's soil leaping out of his pot as he pours his water in.

2nd picture: My daughter refuses to wear hair accessories most of the time, but prefers holding her hair out away from her face (usually one hand at each side) despite the lack of coordination that follows having your hands always occupied.

Wet chalk and Beep!

This morning (rainy) we tried a couple quick, no-fuss activities that I thought were worth sharing. I found both of these in The Preschooler's Busy Book.

Wet Chalk Drawings
6 Tbs sugar
1/4 c water
colored chalk
paper, white
Mix together sugar and water and pour over chalk; let soak for ten minutes. Use the wet chalk to draw on white paper. If you use white chalk, draw on colored paper.

What we learned: Rinse the chalks and pat dry after soaking. Creates a smooth, no-smudge line with more saturated color. We only had sidewalk chalk; regular chalk would be better for small-scale drawing. Above photo compares dry and wet chalk drawings.

Beep!
Choose a familiar story, song, or rhyme that your child has heard often. Read or recite the story, song, or rhyme, but substitute wrong words or names in obvious places. For example: "Old MacDonald had a car" or "Mary had a little dog." Have your child listen for the incorrect words and say "Beep!" when he hears one.
(This is listed in the Out and About section of the book. Great for car rides.)

What we learned: Using a Taboo buzzer (which is typically hidden away in grown-up game land) instead of saying "Beep!" was fun for the kids and because they enjoyed listening for the silly words, they actually restricted it's use to beeping in the appropriate places. We enjoyed singing familiar songs and reading a familiar book for this game. Lots of giggles. My daughter wants to play it again after naptime and "show Daddy" when he gets home.

Drawing 101

I've always enjoyed drawing, but am not one to sit down and draw very imaginatively. I'm more of a still-life, figure-drawing type. Just meaning that I feel like I need to look at something to draw it successfully. That's probably why I don't necessarily enjoy drawing with my kids. It seems like drawing with kids is usually, "Here are some crayons and blank paper. Go for it."
Well, recently, I've been seeing these Ed Emberley books highly recommended (on several blogs. You know, all bloggers are reading, making, cooking the same things). So, of course, I gave in and bought some. Not really....I told my mom I wanted one and she bought some for us. I'm really glad she did. My daughter has so far enjoyed drawing animals with these very simple step-by-step instructions and now my husband and I have a book to go to when the kids ask how to draw a specific animal. This book starts with instructions for a simple ant and ends with a more complex dragon. In between are fun animals like happy pollywog, turtle skating in the rain, pig with trousers, goats butting, and mean octopus. The pictures above are my daughter's first attempts at smiling spider, bug, pollywog, caterpillar, rooster and porcupine. The pictures below show the book's images compared to her drawings.

I think this afternoon we'll try still-life drawing. Such a simple activity, and yet I had to read the suggestion somewhere to realize I could try it with small children. I think I'll let them choose a piece of fruit or vegetable and a toy to set up on the table and we'll all draw them together. Hopefully, this will be fun for them, but as a bonus, it should be fun for me to get my drawing fingers going again!

Shrinky Dinks

One of my daughter's friends gave her a shrinky dink set for her birthday. We opened it this morning and made bracelets. These are suggested for children over age 7, but with close parental supervision, it worked well. Of course, now the hard job is keeping them away from the baby, but that's a constant challenge when you have two older kids.
My daughter and son both made one bracelet for themselves and one to give away (most likely as a birthday gift to the girls who gave them the shrinky dinks...is that lame?) The set also comes with accessories to create hair clips, cell phone charms, magnets, and necklaces. It's nice to pull a ready-to-go project out of a box once in a while instead of creating, gathering/preparing the supplies myself.
I think it would be fun to create their own shrinky dinks, too, with blank shrinky sheets. Sometime.

Happy Easter!

This morning's efforts. With 2 and 3 year-olds I've decided it's most fun to skip the fancy egg-decorating techniques and just enjoy the dipping, crowding, swirling, and smashing that comes with the old PAAS dye kit.
I've also decided that the perfect adult-to-child ratio for preschoolers is 2:1.
Today, after we dyed our eggs, we painted with the dye. Paintbrushes, spoons, straws, some good pucker-up-and-blow, and just pouring the bowls of dye onto the watercolor paper produced good and messy results.
Happy Easter!

Homemade Gifts By Kids

Some gifts to be made by kids:

Framed art. Let your kids play with paint, markers, colored pencils, crayons, glue sticks, fabric and paper shapes on sturdy paper or posterboard. Take the best bit and pop it into a readymade frame or have a custom frame built for it. Ask them to draw specifically for a relative or take samples of their work and collage it yourself.
Edibles. Any treat that's cut, rolled, dipped, or decorated will be most fun for the kids to make. These shortbread domes are easy and can be color-coordinated for the holidays.
Place mats. We made these for Thanksgiving, but winter-themed mats would be nice for Christmas (that way the recipient can use them after Christmas as well as before). Cut out some trees, snowmen, snowflakes, etc. instead of the turkeys and such for the kids to color and glue. Add photos to really personalize them.
Dough ornaments. Here are some recipes for dough ornaments. You can use Christmas cutters or any that seem appropriate for the person you're gifting. A couple years ago, we made my dad a fish-shaped ornament that was painted like a Christmas tree.
Microwavable salt dough ornament
Multiple recipes for baked dough ornaments
Wreath ornaments. Here is a tutorial for a super cute button wreath ornament.
Painted pots. Buy a set of small ceramic pots and help the kids paint them. Package the appropriate amount of potting soil and seeds (grass is good if any children will be watching it grow) and drop in the pots. Or paint a larger pot and use it to hold an unrelated gift (two gifts in one!) {My children did not paint the pots pictured above, but that was the closest example I had on hand.}
Year in Review Book. Give your faraway grandparents a book chronicling your child's year. "This year, I...." Let your child help choose events she wants to include, drawings, any personal messages. Add cute quotes, check-up stats, etc. See Blurb.com for making your own professional-quality book.

What's Your Name, Face?

I have a sweatshirt I wear around the house that has several different simple faces (line-drawn happy faces) on it. My kids are always asking, to each individual drawing, "What's your name, face?" We've given each face a name and personality. We have Francois, Mark, Salvador, Andy, Mona Lisa, Jan (pronounced "yawn"), etc. I never knew a shirt could provide so much entertainment.
This face is a drawing by my daughter (she's 3) and I absolutely love it! We rescued it from a giant piece of scribbled on and torn kraft paper. I don't know it's name. I'll have to ask. My daughter, not the face.
A friend of ours recently helped us animate the face to sing a bit of a song we'll be using in our almost-annual family music video. Should be fun to see! We're also thinking of transferring it onto some little t-shirts or onesies for the fam. Maybe I'll post on that later.