Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Preschool Art Project and Craft – Coffee Filter Leaf Mobile

watercolor coffee filter leaf 
We love watercolor paints, and once in a while I like to make liquid watercolors with our regular tempera.  Simply thin the paint out with water, or use liquid starch for a shiny finish, until the paint is as watery as you want it.
 best child's paint paletteI know I’ve said this a million times… my paint palette of choice is still a muffin tin with an applesauce cup in each well!

Coffee filters, paper towels, or even loosely woven fabric (think muslin or any woven cotton) work great with liquid watercolors.  We decided to use coffee filters this time, and instead of using a pipette to drip the paints, or a paintbrush, we folded our filters up and dipped each corner into the paints.  This created a fun tie-dyed effect.  dip each corner in a color

tie-dyed coffee filter

finished coffee filter
M and his cousin S had so much fun with this that we ended up with over 30 tie-dyed coffee filters.  
What does one do with 30 tie-dyed coffee filters??30 tie-dyed coffee filters!
Well, thankfully I was in the middle of reading this post of Jolanthe’s, where she shared her beautiful tissue paper leaf mobile.  I stole her idea and used what we had available – colorful coffee filters. :)

We did not use all 30+ of them, so if there are any more creative ideas for these babies, let me know!

I drew a few leaves on several of the filters and cut them out.draw leaf shapes
draw more leaf shapesAn older child could do the drawing and cutting themselves.  I admit, this turned into a Mostly-Mama Craft, but I enjoyed it and I love the end result.

Punch a hole or use a needle and some string or yarn to thread a length of string through each leaf.  Tie them in varying lengths along a dowel rod.   I have a ton of dowel rods in my craft collection, although I’m not quite sure why.  If you don’t, you could easily use some popsicle sticks glued together or even a pipe cleaner, or get thrifty and decorate a paper towel tube to use (those things are handy to have around, aren’t they?).
 
Tie another length of string to the dowel for hanging and hang it in front of a sunny window. 
    hanging leaf mobile
finished leaf mobileM loves his new leaf mobile!

Have a beautiful day! :)


4 comments:

  1. Oh, I really like it!

    I thought I'd let you know that I finally made my Jesse Tree, thanks to you! It's a bit different, as you will see, but I thank you so much for your inspiration and printables!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ooo this turned out great!! I love how the light shines through them.

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  3. This is so cute! I am loving it! Will have to save it somewhere and do it some day ...

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  4. Favorite new phrase "mostly-mama craft". Very nice site! Thanks

    ReplyDelete

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