Art / Craft Time – Leaf Guys

Last week our planned art project was a flop and I ended up deciding to not even post about it.  The very next day I saw the cutest little leaf people that my (real life) friend Jill made with her 2 oldest kids, and knew right away that we’d have to make these too. :)  I’ve seen this little project on blogs before but for some reason didn’t think M would be interested.

Turns out he’s interested.  After we made the first bunch, pictured in this post, he made more the next day, and the day after that!  This was definitely a big hit and if you’ve never done it with your kiddos, I highly recommend it!

Here’s how I had it set up: Sometimes I like to just set up a project and leave it until he notices it and asks, “What are we going to do?!” :)  It’s like a little surprise and makes him more eager to do it.  You’ll need colored paper, a marker for drawing in details, glue, and googley eyes.  M also wanted scissors once we started putting the leaves on the papers, so he could cut off stems or cut leaves in half.

Grab a basket and go outside to find some freshly fallen leaves.  You don’t want crunchy ones that will fall apart when you press them onto the paper.  Also pick dandelions if you see them – they make great earrings or eyes!Enjoy a little fall sunshine while you are at it:

The weather was just cool enough for him to need his new little mama-made hat with a pom-pom. :) 

Bring your leaves inside and start creating! 

       

This was so much fun!  I hope you try this with your kids!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Art Time – Nature Collage

 

This little art project is perfect for a window decoration this time of year! I was thinking of simply finding and gluing objects from nature onto a piece of sturdy cardboard.  M is such a glue guy.  And he wanted to do the whole play-doh collage in an egg carton project again, which was very cool, and very tempting… but then I was reminded of contact paper collages by this post at One Hook Wonder.  They are so easy, and always turn out so lovely with the autumn sunlight shining through.  So that’s what we did!

First, M grabbed his “nature basket” and headed outside to see what he could find:

I made a point of telling him no rocks, and no sticks bigger than a finger.  I wanted to avoid the frustration that would come if he tried to stick something too heavy to the contact paper.  He searched and searched, and mostly found an assortment of leaves (I love the bright red ones!), a couple of dandelions, small pinecones, and one small stick. :)

He brought everything in and set it on the table while I cut the contact paper.  Ours is roughly 7” x 20”.  If all of your nature items are flat, you can cut 2 pieces and sandwich the items in between.  They are sure to stay put that way.  Since M had some lovely 3-dimensional objects, we chose to just use one piece of contact paper.

 

 

When he was done arranging items and sticking them down, we hung the finished collage in his bedroom window.

  Beautiful. :) 

And this way the birdies can enjoy it too. 
(M is always thinking about birds.  I wonder if he will be an ornithologist?)

 

It was so much fun, and we realized the next day that we’d missed all the pretty red maple leaves in our front yard, so we made another one!

 

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Art Time – Fun with Paint Dough

We’ve been trying to fit a mama-directed open-ended art project in each week.  This week we made “paint dough”.  The recipe for this was from one of the books I’ve mentioned in previous posts – Preschool Art, by MaryAnn Kohl, a book very well worth getting!: 

To make this special kind of paint, mix together equal parts of flour, salt, and water.  I used about 1 cup of each to make about 2/3 a bottle of 5 different colors (you can see our bottles below, I think they each hold about 2 oz.).  After mixing you should have something that looks like this:   Add a tablespoon of tempera paint in various colors (divide the mixture into separate bowls before adding the color), and mix in.  You could use a few drops of food coloring too, if you’d rather.  Use a funnel to fill squeeze bottles with the paint.  Because I know I’ll get questions about where we bought our squeeze bottles, here’s the link. :)

The neat thing about this “paint dough” is that it’s runny, but the colors just bump up against each other and don’t mix together.  You could swirl them with a toothpick or skewer for a really neat effect!  It also creates texture because it is so thick.  Not quite like puffy paint, but very similar.  Thick, yet runny… a very interesting combination!

Use heavy cardboard or something similar for painting on.  We ran out of cardboard and started using cardstock, which was not a thick enough surface and some of the paint soaked through.  It’s a very heavy, wet paint, so a layer of newspaper underneath is a good idea too.

M was fascinated with this this paint.  I have to admit, I was pretty fascinated myself, and spent a little time just playing around with it and having fun. :)

He squeezed and painted and immensely enjoyed himself until every last drop of paint was gone.We had oodles of paint dough creations.  Here’s a few samples of how it looks:

A van on a colored road

     A tree

 A lion, with a green smile :)

Once the paint was all used up M begged for more, but I had used up all our salt and couldn’t make anymore that day.  However, this is definitely on our do again list! 

I should mention that this paint dough takes a while to dry – ours took two whole days for the pieces that had pretty large puddles on them, but only overnight for the pieces with simple lines.  Next time I’ll adjust the tips of our squeeze bottles (they are the glue kind) so they don’t allow quite so much to come out at a time.  All in all, it was a definite success and clean up was minimal for the amount of time it kept M happily occupied!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Summertime Art – Leaf Printing (in your swimsuit)

I’m trying to do one planned and structured art project with M each week.  He gets in plenty of self-directed art with his art easel outside and his little art box inside.  MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Preschool Art has been a great source of ideas and inspiration, and this little project came straight from its pages.






  

We both enjoyed this activity… M loved the process, and I love the beautiful result.

To do this, you will need a sturdy piece of cardboard or cardstock, glue, paint in the colors you want (M chose green, yellow, and blue), a small paint roller (ours is from the craft section at Walmart), a small tray or dish to roll the paint in, and some sheets of plain paper. You’ll also need newspaper to put under your project if you are working on a surface that you don’t want painted.

Next, you need to go find your leaves!  This was a really fun part of the project for M – he hunted and hunted until he found the perfect leaves.  Yes, we did take a few straight from our shrubs or low-hanging tree branches, but we found a lot just lying on the ground too.  You’ll need fresh, flexible leaves, not ones that are dry and apt to crumble when they are being rolled with paint.

Arrange them, face down, on your piece of cardboard.  You want the lined and veined surface on the underneath to be face up.  Once you are pleased with your arrangement, glue them in place.

Put some paint in your tray and roll your roller through it.  We started off with green and yellow (mostly green), then for our third print we added in a little blue.

(Like how the newspaper appeared under his work?  Suddenly I realized I didn’t really want a green and yellow picnic table.  And do you think the people listed in those obituaries minded that we were using them for this?)

Gently, gently, roll the leaves with the paint:

Oh my heavens, my chubby little baby has turned into a skinny big boy!

Once every leaf is covered with paint, place a sheet of plain paper over the top and rub it, again gently, all over.  

Lift it off and you’ve made lovely leaf prints!
I have these hanging in my kitchen now and sometimes I just stop to admire them.  I’m thinking of framing them and hanging them in our breezeway (like a 3-season porch that runs the length of our house).  They make me happy. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Summertime Sidewalk Painting

Last summer we had a lot of fun making sidewalk paint and using it on our patio.  I had completely forgotten about this great activity, but apparently it stuck with M, who asked me about it a few days ago. 

Here’s the oh-so-simple recipe:

1 part cornstarch to 1 part cold water
5 to 6 drops of food coloring for each color you want to make.

We used 2/3 Cups of both cornstarch and water.  And we ended up with two good-sized containers worth of paint (a bit bigger than an applesauce or jello snack container).  It went fast, so we definitely could’ve used more!
Just mix the water slowly into the cornstarch.  If you are using a whole box of cornstarch, you’ll need to use a whisk or maybe an electric mixer.  Pour it into your individual containers, then add your food coloring and gently mix it in.   Food coloring will stain clothing so be careful!!  It did wash completely off of our driveway with the first rain, so no worries there, although you could always use a dab of washable paint for color in place of the food coloring.

We used regular old paintbrushes and some foam brushes to paint with.  It’s fun to watch the watery paint dry quickly in the sun – it becomes so vibrant as it dries!  Pretty, pretty, pretty. :)

M drew a pirate ship.  Obviously. ;)  And some other things I can’t remember.  I drew our family and the earth and sun.  It’s really hard to resist getting down and having fun with this sidewalk paint – we had a wonderful time doing this together!
Have a beautiful day! :)

3-D Nature Art

M has a “nature basket” that he just adores.  Anything interesting that he finds outside is lovingly placed in his nature basket.  Quite often it’s mainly full of leaves and I empty it every once in a while (he doesn’t seem to notice).  This time, however, it had lots of really cool things in it – a group of leaves still clumped together on a stem, several pieces of bark (he’s taken to sawing the bark off of our fire wood), some maple seeds, and some tiny pinecones.  I decided these were keepers and set up an art activity for him one morning.

Here’s what we used:
His nature basket, an egg carton, and some playdough that we need to use up so we can make a new batch.

(As an aside, this playdough has been around since Valentine’s Day – seriously!  And it is still in perfect condition!  I am loving our homemade playdough.  I know I posted our recipe at sometime… I’ll have to look for that link!)

M was really excited about this project, even more so than I expected him to be.  He rolled small portions of the playdough into balls and set them inside the egg carton sections, pressed them down a tiny bit, and then stuck his nature treasures into the playdough:
We didn’t have enough playdough for 2 of the sections, so he decided to leave the two sections in the center empty.  We've noticed he's very symmetrical with things like this - is that odd for a 3 year old?

Here’s what his final product looked like:

And the view from the side:
M was very proud of it, and I absolutely love it!  It looks so neat sitting on a table in our breezeway.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Watercolor Painting with Markers

M has been doing this forever and somehow I’ve never posted about it.  This was something he discovered completely on his own! 

We had a set of 6 chunky markers and he left them out for several days without their lids on.  Of course they were completely dried out by the time we realized it.   This happened about a year ago, and he still has, and uses,  the same markers!  His easel has a spot for a cup of water (for watercolor painting obviously), and one day he filled it up with water, dipped his dried markers in the water, and began drawing with them like nothing had happened.  

I think I’ve read somewhere that you can use dried markers this way, but I have no idea how M knew it!  He has made some really neat artwork in this way… kind of like regular marker drawing with a bit of watercolor painting here and there.  Again, he’s been doing this for the past year and the markers are still working great (as long as they are wet).

Want to see a little demonstration?  :)

Dip the dried up marker into the water:
Color on your paper:
And voila!  Beautiful artwork:
So, put those old markers to good use! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)