Decorative Paste Papers & Cards

Decorative-paste-papers

I came across this technique over at Art for Small Hands where there is a detailed tutorial for undertaking this as a classroom activity.  It’s a traditional technique, which, like marbling, was often used in the 18th and 19th centuries for decorating the endpapers of books.  As an activity it’s cheap, easy and a lot [...]

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Natural Paints

blackberries

This time of year is good for experimenting with natural paints and pigments.  It’s easy to forget that in the not too distant past, all dyes and paints had to be obtained from the natural world, directly from animals, minerals and plants. The resulting colours may not always have been as bright as those obtained [...]

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Sun Prints

Sun-print

Inspired by Suzanne at SkyBlueSea, I decided to have a go at Sun Prints with the kids.  The proper name for these is Cyanotypes, and it is a technique first developed in the early days of photography by Sir John Herschel in 1842.  In fact they are the original ‘blue-prints’. They’re really simple to do [...]

Art Materials – Wax Crayons

crayons

It’s been a little while since I started this series off with Canvas, and I thought it was about time I continued it.  This time I’m going to look at that staple tool of any self-respecting budding artist – wax crayons.  Traditional, cheap, practical, easy to use, these are so ubiquitous that their creative potential [...]

Art Materials – Kicking off with Canvas

Children's art on Canvas

I am introducing a new regular informative series to Artful Adventures on the subject of Art materials – I’m not sure yet quite how regular this will be, but there are lots of art materials out there, with new ones being introduced all the time so there’s plenty of material to go at (no pun [...]