Messy Hands, Messy Everything! - Finger Painting

If you read my last post you may remember that our window painting turned into window finger painting. So, this art activity up was just the thing to extend the girl's interest a little more.

Not that I organised it but even the least organised, messiest, spontaneous activity can be fun! It certainly wasn't put together the way I would like it BUT the two girlies were so happy doing painting after painting after painting. They were in their pj's. I was trying to cook pasta for dinner. And, there wasn't a place to hang the artwork so the pictures just piled up one after the other. This of course didn't seem like a problem at all for a 4yr old and a 2 yr old. They were completely lost in all the fun and excitement.

There are lots of ways to make finger paint. Here's how we did it....

Cel mix paint + a bit of warm water + some powder paint colours (food colouring) + paper + hands = a whole lot of messy hands fun.

I had some fun too. I got to see the smiles of joy as the girls put together their own creative art activity.

Window Painting

We had such a beautiful sunny winter's morning here in Brisbane the other day that there was no way were were going to waste it indoors, even though the girlies are both a little unwell. So, outside we went with our hats and sunscreen on, ready to discover some play fun.

Now that Miss H is a little bit taller, I thought it was time to get some paints out and have a great time painting our downstairs windows, which have always been a little too high. The girls had just finished drawing on the besser bricks with chalk nearby so they were ready to give this activity a go.

I squirted some shaving cream into our paint pots and added a bit of powder paint colour (you could use food colouring too). Miss M and Miss H helped to mix the colours, which turned out to be a good activity in itself. We used shaving cream today but we could have chosen to use acrylic or Cel mix paint instead.

Even though I thought Miss H was taller, she wasn't quite tall enough so out came the outdoor chairs and the girls got started on making the windows look colourful and bright.

The girlies discovered that the paint felt great so they did away with the brushes and started finger painting, also a wonderful experience. To end our painting activity, we made sure to take some pics and then washed the paint away with the hose. The windows were clean again.

Miss M got some inspiration from the hose and ran upstairs. When she came back down again she was dressed in her swimmers hoping for a splash from the hose. Instead, I sent her back upstairs and the two girls (in their swimmers) had a swim in the bath. A great finish, and an easy way to clean off all that paint.

Funny Play Dough People

Meet our funny play dough people.

This activity is just plain fun. You can use anything you like really to create faces of all kinds. We found some coloured pasta, "pop cleaners" pipe cleaners and large google eyes in amongst our collage stocks and when we repeated the activity we also added some coloured feathers which worked perfectly too. I set up everything in little bowls and gave each of the girlies (+ our teenage house guest who thought it was a great activity too) a blob of play dough, then they got creating. We also took this activity to our Mums on the GO group and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it for the whole morning.

It's great to find a new, fun activity, especially a play dough one. We love our play dough play!

Surprise Playdough

So, there I was sneaking around the kitchen this morning while the girlies played, hoping that they wouldn't catch me preparing this activity. All was good, they were busy in play.

I made one batch of plain play dough and once it was finished I kneaded it. Then, I put the dough into two blobs and prepared it for the big surprise. This IS called "surprise play dough!"

I pressed my fist into the centre of each blob to make a hole and to add the surprise part, I took some coloured powdered paint and sprinkled it in. For this dough I put red and yellow together so the girls could make orange. Once the powder paint was ready, I covered it up again so the dough looked like the original plain blobs with no sign of colour anywhere.

When I took the dough to the girls they seemed very excited to have some new dough to play with. Little did they know the activity would get more exciting than that. Once they started to play and roll and knead the dough, the colours started to come out and mix. This really captured Miss M's(4)interest. She worked at it 'till she had a beautiful orange colour. What a fantastic, fun-filled surprise!

Paper Mache Eggs

Our decorated eggs.

A Little Bit of Easter Creativity

The girlies and I are in the middle of making some beautiful paper mache Easter eggs, just for fun. We've added our first few layers of newspaper, in preparation for the final two layers which will be white paper, followed by our final layer of choice. I'll pop by the blog tomorrow to show you how they end up looking.

To Make Something From Paper Mache...

Use Cel mix glue or kids PVA glue as they both dry clear. PVA gets pretty messy so be prepared to work quickly and clean it up straight away. Remember paper mache glue in the old days? Flour + water = glue, not so good for this activity if we'd like to look at them again next year.

Tear up strips of paper. You can use any type really. We could have started with our good paper but I'd prefer to waste newspaper rather than good wrapping paper.

Start by using your finger to spread the glue onto the desired shape...eg: a balloon. In our case we have used Styrofoam eggs from the craft shop. Notice the skewar in the bottom of the egg? That's so the air can get all around and dry the glue. We don't want our eggs sticking to the table top.

Add the strips of paper one at a time until the shape is covered and keep using your finger and glue to smooth down the edges.

Only do a few layers of paper mache at a time to give your work time to dry. You can always return and do a little each day until your project is finished.

Paper Mache is a messy process and can be a bit tricky for little fingers but the end product can look really special. I can't wait to finish ours off!

The Dolls House

before

This has been a long time coming!

Well over a year ago I purchased a wooden dolls house while out "treasure hunting" one day. It had just come in to the store and the price on it was only $10. The house wasn't a flash one and to look at it, it seemed to have been well loved by it's previous owner. The curtains, wall paper and flooring choices told me that it had probably been made a very long time ago and I'm sure it was made with lots of love. It was the perfect project for the parents of two little girls!

So I took the house home and it sat and sat...and sat down under the house just collecting dust but recently we decided it was time to give the dolls house a make over, ready to give to our girlies for Christmas. We have spent many hours downstairs painting and sanding and doing more painting while the girls slept - the house had to be pink, Miss M's favourite colour! We purchased the groovy furniture and a little family online and made little curtains and here it is....

....our labour of love - the dolls house.

after

Keep Your Cards

At Easter time we save shiny egg wrappers to use in our art and craft and at Christmas time we save our Christmas cards to use in all kinds of Christmas fun, the following year. This craft is just a simple Christmas collage using Cel Mix glue (or glue sticks) and the pictures from the fronts of cards. Too easy!

Angel Art

I hope you don't mind if am a proud mummy for a moment....

Miss M (4.3) was asked to paint a canvas as part of a display of children's artwork telling the true story of Christmas. Her painting now hangs on the gallery wall of our church amongst a line up of other beautiful paintings. How excited was I!! I had to remember that I wasn't the one commissioned to do the art!! She was so excited too and thought it was wonderful to be asked. As she painted she said, "I am a real artist Mummy!"

Miss M's part of the story was the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she was going to have a baby. Her painting is the first you can see on the left. She used acrylic washable paint and some gorgeous starry glitter to make her painting light and bright. (from the glow of the angel)

Holiday Fun - Wet Chalk Drawing

Soak your chalk in water,

then let the kids get creative on a path, side of the house or chalkboard.

They'll love this activity - the chalk will be much more vibrant in colour.

Wrap it Up With Circle Paper

How special is it to receive homemade wrapping paper from a littlie. Old paintings are great for this! Both my girls were very happy to get birthday presents from their Melbourne cousins which were wrapped up in the most beautiful homemade bubble printing paper. It made my day to see it too - so creative!

We had a present to wrap for a little friend recently so we decided to make our own wrapping paper by using circle objects to print with. It didn't take much to set the activity up. We needed to do find some bottle lids, ribbon spools and other round objects and we were ready to go.

Circle Printing

You will need....

Paint - we used washable acrylic

Paper - we used white easel paper but butchers paper would work well too

Paint tray - take away lids are great for this

Pour paint into the trays and start printing onto the paper with the circle shapes. The effect that comes from the circles is wonderful.

You could extend this activity by...

• using other shaped objects from around the house

I have a thing for spots and stripey patterns so this activity really appeals to me. Could spotty paper be the thing for the Christmas presents under our tree this year?

Just Add Water

Find a small bucket.

Fill with water.

Get a paintbrush.

Paint the house!

Make Your Own Pop Up Cards

This week we celebrated Daddy's 40th birthday so with much excitement two little girls made their own cards to give to him. Miss M (4.1) and I decided that it would be fun to try making a pop up card so it would be extra special for such an occasion.

We googled how to make pop-up cards and found this great tutorial with easy to follow instructions. Then we watched this tutorial so we knew how to decorate it. Making the card didn't take long at all and the finished product was super. (I'm a bit biased!!) Instead of using the glue to make ours we used a strong double sided tape as I don't always trust a glue stick to hold cardboard in place.

As Daddy opened his card on the morning of his birthday he got a wonderful surprise - there was a picture of him riding his surfboard on a big wave and on the front of the card he found a picture of our family.

Maybe your kids could try making a pop up card for someone you know or why not try out some special designs for Christmas.

Five Creative Ideas with Cookie Cutters

We collect cookie cutters. Sometimes we find a few when we go on treasure hunts and add them to our container and I have some great ones I have been given as gifts or have purchased over the years. Here are five creative things that can be done with cookie cutters....

1 + Play with play dough +

There is nothing better than having a big blob of play dough kept in the fridge ready for use at any time. We use all kinds of different things with our dough but I like to have the cookie cutters available for a spur of the moment play dough play. This recipe is perfect for play with cutters.

2 + Bake some biscuits +

Here's an easy peasy recipe we like to use for baking biscuits and here it is being used with cutters. Cookie cutters are great for little hands that like to help with cooking.

3 + Print on paper +

Printing with cookie cutters is easy to do and the effect is so wonderful you can use what you create to make wrapping paper. Put some acrylic paint (we use washable) onto trays or disposable plates. Dip the cookie cutters into the paint and print onto sheets of paper. We like the effect of printing on brown paper. Any size paper will work. Why not try making some beautiful gift cards.

4 + Trace around +

With this activity we took three sheets of crisp white easel paper and joined them together with tape. I tipped the cookie cutters out and the girls used felt pens to trace around the shapes. This was a good activity to do while I cooked the dinner. The girls were kept busy creating.

5 + Sandwich shapes +

Making sandwich shapes from cookie cutters is as simple as buttering the bread, adding the filling and making shapes in the bread using cutters. I find the best bread for this is the bread you can purchase at the supermarket. As lovely as fresh bread from the bakery is, the bread shape doesn't allow for many cutter shapes and you want to try and get the most out of the bread without wastage. Of course there isn't any wastage in this house as I'm happy to eat the in-between bits, especially when it's fairy bread!!

For an even prettier shape you can use tiny cutters to cut the centre out of the top shape which will reveal the spread. Jam looks particularly good. If only I could put my hands on our tiny cutters after our move!

We play games with our sandwich shapes. We count them and talk about their shapes. We sing songs and guess which ones are the odd ones out. I enjoy presenting the girls lunch creatively, the girls learn something in amongst the fun and hopefully the sandwiches look good enough to eat. Cookie cutter lunches don't just have to be reserved for party time.

Making Stamped Cards - Creating a Gift

Yesterday I posted that we were making our own stamps to create some thank you cards for friends. At the time the stamps were happily drying in the sun. By the afternoon they were ready for the stamping fun and the girls were able to create beautiful and very colourful homemade printed cards.

Stamping Printed Cards

You will need...

Plain cards - I buy these from a craft shop, cut to size but you could just as easily use paper or cardboard you have to cut yourself.
Acrylic paint - we used Crayola washable paints
Paint trays - we used plastic plates. Take-away container lids are also great.
Stamps - we used our homemade stamps!!!

Pour the paint onto the paint trays - we put one colour on each plate and spread it out.
On each paint tray we then placed a stamp. This made sure that the colours stayed fresh.
Begin by dipping the stamps into the paint and then placing them on the card.
I lay our cards out flat so the girls would only put the prints on one side. It also gave them more space to be creative.
The folding and writing can come later when our printed cards are dry.

And here they are...

These are our homemade cards to say a BIG thank you to our very special, giving and helpful friends.

Do you like to get your kids to make gifts for their friends and family? What have they created? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Making Stamps - Creating a Gift

Recently we've had new friends and wonderful old friends (separately) do some amazing things for our family. Each act of kindness was to bless the girls but really through their kindness we have all been blessed in various ways.

Their kindess has prompted us to give a thank you back and considering that the gifts were for the girls, I thought it would be great if the thank you's came from them. We have started a two part process of making our very own thank you cards using homemade stamps. The girls made the stamps this morning and this afternoon will use them to decorate cards. I'm excited to see how they will turn out and I think the girls may enjoy using something they have designed to make other creative things.

Making Stamps

You will need....

Small blocks/ off-cuts of wood

Various raised collage items - bubble wrap, milk bottle lids, pipe cleaners etc are some of the things we used - look for interesting textures and shapes.

PVA glue

Making stamps is easy enough to do. Simply attach a collage item to one side of a block of wood using the PVA glue then repeat the process 'till you've made as many stamps as you would like. Some items like pipe cleaners may need added weight on top while they dry. This will stop them from springing up.

Here are some of our homemade stamps. I'll show you our thank you card creations tomorrow.

Playing Along - Continuing Our Spring Mural

The girls and I are playing along with everyone over at Childhood 101 We Play.

I promised you I'd give you a look at our spring mural as we continue to work on it, adding things here and there. We've had two more days creating and glueing since my last spring mural blog post .

Yesterday Miss M was in the mood for creative arty fun so she spent the afternoon making various spring things to stick on our mural. The fun did start though with Miss H and I working on the rainbow together, which Miss M then finished off. We just had to add a spring rainbow after seeing a most beautiful rainbow follow a spring shower of rain the other day.

Miss H added the simple things to our mural, like centres to her gorgeous patty pan flowers while Miss M thought to create the clouds, insects, a bird and a bird's nest.

So here it is so far....

The new things we added are...

• tissues for the clouds
• a pom pom for the centre of a flower
• tissue paper + paper for a rainbow
• yellow feather for a bird
• crepe paper + pipe cleaners twisted to make butterflies
• Easter stuffing (paper) to make a bird's nest
• felt for the centre of a flower
• google eyes to add to the mouse

Our mural continues to be a work in progress because we're still keen to add more animals and water life. It's going to be one very full picture when it's done. Spring has definitely sprung here in our play/ art room!

Come play at the Childhood 1o1 We Play link up.

Tracing and Painting

I thought the girls and I could give some tracing a go after being inspired by a blog post I read here at The Artful Parent and after enjoying our body tracing activity so much but instead of making this a one off project, we worked on it over two days. It was great to turn it into something more than just tracing, even though the tracing part was super fun.

Yesterday afternoon we traced around interesting objects we found around the home. This was great fun, finding and tracing. There was an endless amount of objects that we could use. Some we found were scissors, a balloon pump, the k-beater from the Kenwood mixer, a whisk, tongs, a mixing spoon, a spatula, a rubber toy dinosaur, a stool and a wooden toy knife.

We finished our project this morning by using colourful acrylic paints to fill the pictures in. Now to hang our bright artwork up!

Table Drawing - 1,2,3

You know what they say about the simple things in life, well table drawing is one of them and it is often the best in our house.

1 Cover the table in paper.

2 Draw all over the paper.

3 Hang it up or toss it away later.

It doesn't get much simpler or cleaner than that.

You could try....

• using butcher's paper, easel paper or backs of old posters. We found our butcher's paper at Riot.
• covering the dining table, the computer desk, the art/ play table or the outside table. Any table, anywhere can be an art space.
• putting out pencils, lead pencils (depending on the age), felt pens, crayons, highlighters, chalk (wet or dry)....any type of drawing or writing implement. Go crazy - you could use them all at once! I like to use Crayola Washable Markers (thanks Steph!). Try using markers with varying widths or shapes of tips.

This activity is set up for my girls to do after rest time. It's a space to let them create whatever they would like to this afternoon. Ah the simplicity - I really like it!

Our Spring Mural - A Work in Progress

Spring arrived here in Australia on the first of September and Miss M was really keen to find out all about it. (I also think she was very keen to find out when the swimmers could come back out!) Together we decided that it would be fun to make a spring mural which could be made of anything and everything we had but showing things that might be found outside in spring.

This has been a great project to work on each afternoon as we add a few more details to our mural. I've kinda had to do what my good friend talks about and "sit on my hands". I have plenty of ideas I'd like to use but I'd prefer to see Miss M thinking about how things could be made. Miss H hasn't missed out on the fun either. She has been happy to go along with the blue painting, adding glue everywhere and putting all the flowers on. It's been a great activity for her language development.

The materials we've used so far are...

• roller painting blue and white acrylic paint for the sky background
• blue crepe paper for the water/ pond
• small patty pans for flowers
• green paddle pops for flower stems
• paper bark - we found this on one of our walks
• scrunched up paper for the tree leaves
• brown toweling for the mouse body + coloured wool for the tail

There's still lots we could add to our mural over time so we'll call it a work in progress. It would be good to collage/draw/ paint some animals to add to Miss M's mouse. It also needs some animal and plant life in the water and some things in the sky but then again, they are just my ideas. Time to talk it over with the girls again! We'll give you another peek at our spring mural soon.

Are you doing any activities to celebrate spring with your kids?