Art Time! Salty Watercolors

This is one of those art projects I’ve had in the back of my mind for ages – meaning to do it, forgetting about it, remembering it, getting too busy to do it, forgetting it again… you get the picture. :)
Finally, we did it.  And, boy, am I glad we did!
It is from one of our favorite art books - Scribble Art by MaryAnn Kohl. 
We used white cardstock, glue, table salt, pipettes, paintbrushes, and our fabulous homemade liquid watercolors left over from a previous project.  (I covered our art tray / muffin tin with foil and the paints kept pretty well.  I did have to add a few drops of water to each cup and mix them up, but they worked just great and were still nice and vivid.)

M scooted up to the table and got busy with the glue bottle:
Then we tried sprinkling salt on with a spoon -
but it was not covering the glue as well as we needed it to.  If you do this, you need to put  a lot of salt on your glue pattern.  I finally just dumped it on right out of the box.  Then we tapped the extra salt off into the tray and we were left with this:
The idea at this point is to gently touch the salt pattern with watercolor paints and it will spread out – you can actually watch it soak through the salt along the lines you’ve made.  We started off with pipettes:It worked, but the paint was also forming puddles because M was squeezing too much paint out.  We (*I*) couldn’t clearly see the salt doing it’s thing because of the puddles.  So, I tried to get M to use a paintbrush and just barely touch it to the salt lines.  This is actually what the book directs you to do, and I should’ve listened to the book because M loves those pipettes dearly (they are fun) and we had a bit of a disagreement at this point.  ;)
Anyway, it did work better with the brush, as long as you just touch the salt.  Don’t brush the salt.  That point is very important!
It was a very neat and fascinating project, watching the soft colors of the paint spread along the salt, sometimes mixing together and creating new colors.  There was something just very slow and relaxing about it. 
Here are the finished art pieces:

This is definitely on our “do again!” list!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Daniel in the Lion’s Den

We were in a hurry this past Friday – trying to get out of town for the big Labor Day weekend (hope you all had a wonderful weekend!), so we only had a short amount of time to spend on our Bible story.
We read Daniel in the Lion’s Den in both of our Children’s Bibles (see them here and here), one in the morning and the other at nap time.
We learned this song with motions (from Hubbard’s Cupboard, click the picture to go to the site):
And we made a paper plate lion. I drew inspiration for this idea from both DLTK and Making Learning Fun.
You will need a paper plate, paint, paintbrush,glue, a triangle cut from construction paper or foam, googley eyes, and 6 strips of black yarn.
First, paint a paper plate orange. We are running low on paint, so we mixed red and yellow together. You could do different color combinations too – maybe yellow for the face and orange or brown for the outer edge of the plate (lion’s mane), but we made it simple and did orange all over.
Glue on googley eyes, and a triangle nose (we used brown construction paper).
Next, glue on whiskers. For the whiskers I put the glue lines on the plate so M could see where to stick the yarn pieces.
For a little scissor practice, I drew black lines for M to cut on the back of the plate, around the mane at about 2 inch intervals.


Ta da – our finished lion:
We also read a library book that sort of tied in to this story. It is titled How Loud is a Lion? by Clare Beaton.

This is a fun book that goes through characteristics of several animals, always asking at the end of each page, “But how loud is a lion?”. Finally, at the end you see the lion and he ROARS (very loudly at our home, but only as loudly as you wish at yours :) ). We discussed how lions are loud and have sharp teeth and claws that could hurt people, and how wonderful it was that God sent an angel to keep Daniel safe – the lions didn’t even touch him!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art – Paper Mosaics

The open ended art theme at Teaching My Little Bookworm this week is Mosaics with Paper.
M’s cousin S was over the day we did this. She is an artsy little 4 year old and I knew she would definitely want in on the action.
I set up a tray of colored paper cut into squares, as well as some templates cut from cardstock. Knowing that our summer days are numbered, I was trying for a summer theme so I cut out a butterfly, a sun, a star, and a beach ball:

I gave them each some glue and they got busy! (That would be a puddle of glue that you see forming on M’s beach ball. He’s crazy when it comes to glue.)
(The necklaces they are wearing were from their previous project – they spent the entire day creating stuff. It was great!)
Here’s the finished pieces:
We are planning to create a mobile from these, but it just hasn’t happened yet!
Check here for more great mosaic ideas!
Have a beautiful day!

Our Art Corner

The linky at Teaching My Little Bookworm this week is about art spaces in our homes. Really, if I participate in any more linkies, my entire blog will be made up of link-ups to other people’s blogs, sigh. Yet, how can I resist such great ideas?! They can’t help that they (the other bloggers with these links) are such creative geniuses, right? ;)

So, here goes… our art corner is mainly in our kitchen, although there are other art areas throughout our home. We have a small eat-in area in our kitchen and this is what you normally see pictures of when M is doing art that I post about. Here’s what it looks like from a couple of different views:

Yep, we hang his art up here. Not only is that a little tacky (although we really don’t care, except I have been known to fly around taking it all down before *important* company comes), but it’s pretty much all hung up there with masking tape. Ugly, ugly masking tape. This is one of the many ways I’ve changed since having a child. Once upon a time I would never have allowed my walls to look like this! But I can’t help myself when those blue eyes look at me and say “where can I hang my art up, Mommy? I made it just for you!” So, there it hangs.

We also have a corner of our living room where M has his “desk” with crayons, scissors, lots of paper, stickers, colored pencils, etc. He does what he wants here as long as it stays in this area and he uses it all properly. Like, for instance, smearing the glue stick on the carpet means it will be taken away. ;) This is what it looks like – pretty messy:

There is also an easel in the kitchen. It has a chalkboard on one side and a white magnetic board on the other. He has markers and chalk here, more paper, magnets, and more stickers.

We also have a homemade outside easel that he paints on pretty regularly.

I store most of our art supplies, paint, stamps, do-a-dot painters, various things to paint with, freezer paper roll (we use this a lot to paint on) oil pastels, modeling clay, glue, etc. in a drawer in our entry closet:

I have a big bunch of newsprint and our paintbrushes in the kitchen.

I have a lot more crafty, artsy stuff in our basement in another plastic drawer organizer. This is where I keep our occasionally used items – faom sheets, foam stickers, sand paper, glitter, feathers, colored sand, extra glue, pom poms, and all the grown up craft stuff for me. :)

And I have 2 more of these drawers (I love them!) for miscellaneous stuff that I just can’t throw away. This is where we keep cardboard tubes, jars, bottles, etc.

So, there you have it. It seems like it’s spread out all over the house. We have a tiny home, so we have to make do with putting things where we can. My dream home would have a room dedicated solely to crafting and sewing.

For more posts about art areas go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time – Magic Pictures

In an effort to use every last drop of paint from these practically empty bottles:

I put a little bit of water in each one, shook it up and poured it into our paint tray (which is a muffin tin with applesauce cups stuck in it):

This made great liquid watercolors!

I found some simple Bob the Builder coloring pages online, printed them out and traced them onto regular printer paper with a white oil pastel crayon.  I find that oil pastels work a bit better for this than regular wax crayons, but that is just my preference.

I put one paper in front of M, gave him some paintbrushes and he got busy.  He loved the watercolors.  I have to say, I think this worked so much better for us than the regular dry watercolors that you have to dip a wet brush in.

He was so surprised to see Scoop!

We did the same with two more pages (sorry no pictures!) and then he just painted on some papertowels:

  We will definitely be doing this again – it was a very fun project!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art – Mosaics with Pebbles

To be fully truthful, I’ll let you know right away that I am totally cheating on this Open Ended Art project. :) For M’s birthday we had him make a stepping stone (from a kit – you can find them at Michael’s), and it sort of, kind of used pebbles. Glass pebbles, that is. :)
We’ve had this kit since he was 18 months old, and kept meaning to make it… and kept forgetting again. SO, we finally got it done on M’s 3rd birthday. He loved doing it and we highly recommend these for Christmas gifts for the grandparents! :)
I mixed the stone material and water together, then Daddy helped M make his handprints:

I put the letter tiles in where I wanted them, then M had fun placing the pieces of glass and glass pebbles wherever he wanted.

He really enjoyed this, we had to remind him a couple of times to be careful not to mess up the words or his handprints; all in all he did a great job!
Here’s the finished stone:

I can’t believe my baby is 3 years old!
For more mosaic ideas, head over to Teaching My Little Bookworm!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time! – Painting with Stuff :)

Monday morning M said, “I have an idea!” (This is his new favorite thing to say), “Let’s paint!”  So, paint we did – I was happy to hear him request this because we used to do some sort of open art thing several times a week (we shot for once a day, but that didn’t always happen), but somehow we’ve gotten out of our art-groove lately.  I bet we haven’t had the paint out in 2 weeks.

He requested blue paint, but since there was not much left in the bottle I gave him some red too and we turned it into a color mixing lesson. 

Then I grabbed a few items that he doesn’t normally paint with – a bath pouf, an old vegetable scrubber, and a foam paintbrush.

He tried them all out:

I had him look at his paper and asked him, “What do blue and red mixed together make?”  He got it right – purple.  I was a little anxious about his answer because I’ve started to wonder if he is a little color blind when it comes to blue and purple.  Often he’s not able to distinguish between the two.  At this age it’s hard to know if he is really having trouble seeing the difference between the two colors or if it’s just that he can’t remember the color names once in a while. 

There are worse things than being color blind, I know!  So, either way I think we’ll survive, ha! :)

Here is the finished artwork:

It’s a house.  Couldn’t you tell?  It’s a “big house”.  Yep. ;)

And, he wanted more “stuff” to paint with, but my mind drew a blank!  We’ll have to do it again when I’ve given it a little more thought.  And when it’s not morning and my brain hasn’t woken up yet.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Open Ended Art – Yellow and Crayons Theme

The theme over at Teaching My Little Bookworm for open ended art this week is yellow and crayons. Check out more artwork here.

One morning this week I set up a piece of newsprint and crayons for M.

Have you ever seen these crayons? They are made by Elmer – the same company that makes the glue – and they are called Color Slicks.

They are so much more vibrant than regular crayons, and they remind me a little bit of oil pastels. We haven’t had them out much lately, and we have been coloring with regular crayons a lot, so I decided these would be more fun for his special theme artwork.

He loves these, but apparently he loves the yellow one least. :) I had to encourage him to use that one, and he made a yellow “tunnel” with it, then went back to the other colors.

I gave him some cotton balls to see if he could smudge the colors, and it worked.

He wasn’t crazy about the effect though – I think he didn’t understand.

Here’s his finished artwork:

Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Rainbows Galore - #2

Because the Gluey-Jello rainbow turned out like it did, we did another rainbow craft.
I gave M a piece of white cardstock and this rainbow painter we found at a discount store ages ago and have never used:

He didn’t really paint in a rainbow shape, but I didn’t necessarily intend for him to. I just wanted the whole paper covered with rainbow colors.

I also had him put his hands together like this (to make a dove) and drew around them on a light beige piece of cardstock:

(Oh, how I love those chubby little hands!)

Then we mixed white glue and very fine silver glitter together on a saucer:

He painted the birdie:

I wish you could see how sparkly it turned out. I have had great results mixing glitter with paint (or even just plain white glue) to achieve a sparkly effect. The key, though, is to use the finest glitter you can find. It’s way less messy than letting them sprinkle the glitter on.

Once the rainbow paper was dry, I drew a rainbow shape on the back and cut it out:
Glue the dove onto the top and you’ve got a pretty little reminder of the story about Noah’s Ark.
Nope, I didn’t make him hold it front of his face, that’s just what he did.
Here’s a close up of the sparkly dove:
It turned out very pretty – the pictures don’t do it justice.
Have a beautiful, sparkly day! :)