kids art conversion - tresure

What to do with all the art your child makes, the colouring in the paintings?
I posted this puppet on a stick idea for colouring in, and today i had a stack of kids artwork i was tiding up and wondered what to do with it all. I put some up on their bedroom walls, and some into a special folder for them to keep and the rest, well today i chose a couple to turn into cards. I cut out rectangles from an abstract painting and colouring in drawing that Eli and i had done together, it was too nice to throw away, a bit random to put on his wall but perfect for cards. I buy blank cards from a cheap store and keep them to make cards, i just glued down bits and voila ready for nice letters or birthday's. I also took one of pepper pig and makka pakka and cut them out, glued, perfect for little friends birthday's.

When they are dry i will put them in a draw and then they are all ready the next time i need a card it's sorted. Easy Peasy and if your feeling up to it you can let your kids so the cutting and pasting, creates another activity.
love sassy

christmas paper - tuesday treasure (a day late)

Its time for us to post some overseas Christmas goodies and we need some paper, so Flynn and i got busy today with some rollers and blue paint. I know that chrissy paper is cheap, but i think presents to loved ones wrapped in home made paper is a more thoughtful way to give gifts. Also it gives Flynn and opportunity to paint on really big bits of paper and that's always fun. It also makes the lead up to christmas that much more exciting for kids if they are involved in all the steps of gift giving. Flynn has been subjected to many christmas shopping trips lately as i madly try to get it done before the shops get to catastrophic. So he has helped choose presents, now he gets to make the paper, he will also be making cards and i may even employ his elfish little hands to manage the sticky tape at wrapping time. He will have a good understanding this way of the joy of gift giving, and i hope too that he will see christmas is about giving to loved ones not just about what hes getting.

ok so how did we make our christmas paper? We had some paper from flynn's daddy that he no longer needed, we got some silver paint and some blue paint, some little sponge rollers and i cut out some stencils. very basic stencils. I cut out a snowman and a snowflake and this was ok, but i cut them out of paper, big mistake they started to break and rip after the 3rd rollering. I then cut some stars out of a empty cat bikkie box and this worked fantastic. I cut one really big star, flynn really liked this one, and a few small stars. The biggest difference i noticed was he struggled with the first stencils because he was rollering around them, needed lots of help. But with the star stencils he was rollering the inside shape the star itself and this clicked with him so much better, interesting that the negative positive aspect would make a difference but at nearly four i can understand its easier to see what your doing. We quickly filled up two big pieces of paper, the silver paint was not bold enough so we combined the blue with it to get a shiny blue paint. I think the paper has worked out rather pretty, i think the key to stencil paper is to keep the stencils simple.

If your having trouble with the drawing up of a stencil you can always print a basic star from the computer, or just let loose and remember that your kids are very forgiving and will love whatever you do! my stars are a bit wonky x x

sassy

linked on mommy club wednesday linky & Its Playtime & tgif linky party & fun stuff fridays

egg carton spiders

Egg carton spiders

require; egg carton (bumpy part), paint & paint brushes, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, scissors, craft knife, skewers or something pointy to poke holes and glue that dries clear.

Cut out each individual bump/cup from the egg carton with craft knife, trim any long bits so they sit evenly.

Poke 8 holes in each egg cup for spider legs with a skewer or point of scissors or large needle, you can either do this now or once they are painted.

Paint ea. cup your desired spider colours and allow to dry.

Glue eyes on, Dylan glued his on top around the side and some very random. Depending on what you do with them would influence where you put the eyes if your going to hang them put them where you can see them, if your going to have them upside down attached by their legs put eyes on top, do you get my drift? You might just put a thread attached through the top and have the children play with them then it doesn't really matter where the eyes are. allow glue to dry.

If you haven't already poked holes do so now and poke pipe cleaners through fold on inside of egg cup, you could glue the legs down now too to make them more robust.

Now you could thread a cotton through the top on a needle attached underneath with a knot if you like for the child to hold the spider. I plan to make a web and attach the spiders by their legs near our steps for Halloween as we are a very small community and the kids do come around trick or treating which is not the norm in NZ.

Mr potato head

 Potato Printing is a classic I remember doing this with my mum. I was chopping up spuds for shepard's pie and i had a lot so I thought why not do some fast spud faces. I used a ball point pen and just kinda jabbed at it then I used the scoopy pointy end of the potato peeler to clear out the pulpy excess. I also cut little handles into the back of the spud so they would be super easy for little tiny boys to use. Results could have been a bit better, activity only lasted 10 mins, but the stamps will keep if you wash them and pop them into a plastic bag and put them in the fridge. The paper makes great wrapping, and an older child could draw bodies for the spuds at a later date. The stamps turn out best if you really slam them into the paper so next time I'm going to encourage some rough stamping and see if I can stretch it out to 20 mins, maybe i need some glitter paint? printing ink would give you the best results for this, but we just used some acrylic paint that we already had. Go see if you have any tato's floating around just asking for a stamping.

Salt Dough Decorations

                                                              Salt Dough Decorations

Salt Dough Recipe;

1 cup of salt,

2 cups of flour

and 3/4 to 1 cup of lukewarm water.

(The amt of water depends on relative humidity.)

Mix the salt and flour together in a bowl, using spatula. Then add the water until a large ball has formed. Knead ball of dough at length on a lightly floured work surface

(somewhere smooth and easy to clean).

The quality of dough you finish with will depend on the time spent on kneading. If the dough is sticky add a mix in the right proportions of flour and salt, or keep adding flour to your bench.

 

Salt dough variations;

You can use coarse sea salt to get a rustic effect if you want.

Replace 2 tablespoons measure of flour with buckwheat flour

thus the mixture is easier to work with.

You can add glycerin which makes modelling easier,

or wallpaper paste (glue) to make stronger models.

Salt dough can be coloured prior to baking with natural colour e.g. coffee grounds, tumeric, chocolate powder or with gouache or food colouring.

 

Any leftovers will keep for a couple of days in a sealed container in the fridge.

 

Decorations.

Last Christmas Dylan's Preschool made christmas stars to thread & hang

which is where i got the idea.

I used cookie cutters for my shapes. roll out dough with a floured rolling pin to @ 1cm thick.

Cut out shapes required ( I used a tree, star, love heart & teddy bear cookie cutter). Re group leftover dough & repeat until used up.

I did actually put food colouring in my mix of green in half & red in half but it comes out quite a soft colour & for this purpose i wanted bright colour.

Make a hole in your decorations big enough (for the child

to thread) prior to cooking them. {If you forget you could drill holes but they may crack if your cooked dough is thin.}

I used a pointy nozzle from a paint bottle to make my holes.

Bake in a slow oven, so i baked mine at 120oc for a few hours to ensure they were really hard & dry.

 

Allow to cool, then paint (acrylic paint) & decorate. we painted ours then sprinkled glitter on the wet paint also. Using wrapping ribbon we threaded each decoration & hung some on the ceiling & some on our xmas tree.

Now a wee tip if you live in a humid climate lacquer them also, as the humidity can make them go soft again (like a stale biscuit & drop off their ribbon) Ideally spray can varnish or lacquer if you can get it, if not paint on varnish. You can re-dry them in the oven if they're not varnish'd & have gone soft (i only did this once while waiting to go shopping & grab some varnish, i don't know if you can keep putting them back in the oven, the glitter & paint were not affected.)

We have our decorations stored in the dry hot water cupboard in an airtight container & hopefully theyre not going mouldy!!! As next christmas i want to get them out & show Dylan what he made when he was 2 , he sat for over an hour decorating them i have never seen him sit so still. I did the process over a couple pf days to keep up interest first day we made the dough & cut them & baked them. Then a couple of days later we painted , decorated & threaded them, then next day we hung them.

They make a great pressie wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon too.

:D

 

Painted Origami Lanterns

What to do with colouring in or paintings???? Make pretty origami!

I wanted to spice up Eli’s night light, currently a string of fairy lights. I was surfing around on the web and saw some pretty party origami lanterns on fairy lights, challenge accepted. I looked at 2 videos on how to fold them, not too tricky for this origami spas I then had 2 attempts on a bit of scrap paper. I looked at the stack of paper we already had but most of it was done on cardboard and I thought it would be too thick. So Flynn and I made some papers. I pre-cut the paper to squares, them I drew with pen some sea related patterns, I then highlighted bits with crayons especially the white crayon to get the wax resist magic for Flynn. I watered down some food colouring in a cupcake baking tray, and we set to work spreading the colour over the crayon. I let it dry and then I started folding the lanterns the last bit where you blow into it so it expands out, is fantastic! Then you take your little paper balloons and pop your twinkle lights into the hole that you breathed into, they stay on really well, till your 1 year old yanks at them.

 I am so impressed they look really pretty and Eli was impressed too. When he saw them there was a lot of baby natter and pointing until I took him to them he was so smiley and pleased and that makes me pleased it was worth it. These would look great for a party, and they would definitely work with any drawings or paintings you already have on paper, but if you want to do it as a special activity glitter paint would look fantastic and or some thinner paper like rice paper. There are also stunning origami papers available, or wrapping papers. Happy folding.  

video on how to fold your lanterns

How to make Dino Painting

Ok if you read my previous post on Flynn's dinosaur pictures I said it was possible to make one even if your kiddies are past the extremely free painting stage. You can get there help to do parts of this or you could do it solo. This technique should work for any kind of words and animal silhouettes. So you will need a canvas or a board to paint on, the one I’m using is mdf board from the hardware store, because I’m going to add some handles to the bottom so that bags hat and so forth can be hung from it. The mdf board can be bolted straight into the wall (a job I leave for tortoise). Carbon Copy paper, you could use tracing paper but the carbon paper is so much faster and gives a darker line to follow. I had to ask at the newsagent counter for it as it’s not a popular item anymore so they sell it by the sheet, one piece can be used multiple times. And some acrylic paint, and brushes, and a computer with printer.

Step one (above), print out the images you want on your painting, arrange them till your happy, then I copied the letters because I wanted a definite idea of where they were going to end up, with the dinosaurs I just knew roughly where I would place them. Then I filled these areas with some rough colour, I blended cadmium yellow and orange to give a nice hot lettering effect, and I threw in a bit of cadmium red too.  Wait for it to dry, that won’t take very long if you live in this hot climate.

(above) Next I took some bubble wrap, painted the wrap with some white paint and Flynn and i pressed or stamped it onto the board, it leaves a nice repeated print. We randomly stamped away, then did another layer with a brown (burnt sienna) we did that immediately so it would smudge a bit with the white. You don’t have to be precious as the desired effect is that haphazard random look. Then I took a small plastic cup mixed about 2 tablespoons roughly of water with a bit of paint and Flynn was allowed to flick, dribble it across. It works best with a sharp flick of the wrist. Together Flynn and I flicked lemon yellow and green (mixed from cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue) with gusto. (below)

When this was all dry I drew / scribbled diagonally across the lettering to give it some more definition with a red coloured pencil. Then I added some tiny dotting details in burnt sienna brown mixed with a dash of ultramarine blue, where I thought the large t-rex was going to make him a bit more impressive.

Then using your carbon paper trace the lettering over again, lining it up carefully, and any other shapes you want, Its a bit hard to see the outline of the diplodocus  but in real life its visible enough to work with. The next step is magic, fill in your negative space around your lettering and dinosaurs!

I did 2 layers for the background an ultramarine blue, the darker one let it dry then dry brushed a ultramarine mixed with white blue over it. Dry brush is as it sounds a brush dipped into the paint and don't dip it into your water.  I went back in after this and added a little bit of white and brown for eye definition. I hope this was explained well enough, go ahead and try your own version!

PS. Eli reached up to the table I was working on pulled this jar without me noticing, broke it and I caught him as he was about to shove broken glass a paint into his mouth!! man that was close, I need eyes in the back of my head.

Finger Paint

Finger Paint = squishy fun

1/2 cup corn flour

3 tablespoons of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 cups of water

Food colouring

So you take the cornflour, sugar, salt and water in a saucepan cook until it thickens, this takes about 10 to 15 mins. Its best if you keep stirring it especially as it thickens. Then take it off the heat let it cool a bit divide into containers (I used baby food jars). Mix in the food colouring to each pot. It Makes a great non toxic paint a bit like a jelly that smooshes onto the paper really well. I add a few drops of essential lavender oil because living in the tropics and I don’t want my boy’s paintings to go mouldy.  You could also add glitter, kid’s love a bit of sparkle. And to extend the play for longer I let Flynn drive a little bashed up car through the paint, leaving burnout marks. He also likes using a comb to scrape through the paint living stripes, a plastic fork or knife would work too.  I hope this brings you and your children many happy paintings.

Ps... Before I let him lose with the paint it hake as many pieces of clothing off as I can and I prep the paddle pool or bath for a fast and easy clean up because @ 3 when they have had enough of something that it they have had enough.

Flynn's Bright Dinos

A while ago I got Flynn to paint some canvases for his bedroom it took 3 sessions of painting to get the canvases as filled up as I wanted. The less white space left the better for this project.  He was encouraged to use crayons paint glitter and to really go for it with enthusiasm. I have three others that I have left intact they are beautiful abstract pictures that I will put up in the house but for his room I wanted something a bit more boyish.  Dinosaurs was the obvious answer for him, but this would work equally well for any silhouette.  I asked his permission first before I altered his paintings then I drew out some dinosaurs and painted the background white. It took 2 layers of white to cover the colourful paintings, and it was slow going around the edges but I’m really happy with the results. I will take a photo when they get hung, must hassle tortoise about that this week. I am working on a tute about this that will work out even if your kids are past the abstract painting stage, or you could do for yourself.