Vintage Christmas Fairy Doll Printable
Over the years I have always tried to add a free printable project at Christmas – I’m not sure I’ve managed it quite every year, but I recently came across this Christmas Fairy Doll in my collection of vintage items. It dates I think to the 1930’s. The original is pretty small, so I’m not sure if the original intention was for it to be scaled up manually, but today at least in the digital era, it should be rather easier to enlarge! To use, download the image, print out, attach the fairy onto lightweight card – I used double-sided adhesive film for this (affiliate link), customise and cut her out.…
Artful Advent Ideas
It has been a long time since I’ve managed to post anything on here. There are lots of personal reasons for this, which I won’t go into here, but with it already approaching the festive season, I thought it was about time added some new, and hopefully useful content. For the last couple of years I have been trying to find the time to establish a proper directory of resources on Artful Kids – it has been something of a stop-start project, but hopefully it is now, finally, starting to take shape. It is a combination of resources already on this site, external resources elsewhere which are free of charge,…
Neon Body Paint Review
Using our own body as a canvas for artwork must be one of the oldest forms of art in existence. Whether it be for ritual, cultural, cosmetic, or purely aesthetic purposes, using paint or tattoos on the body is millennia old and has never really lost its popularity. Summer is the perfect time to experiment with it, and having purchased some body paint for a forthcoming event recently, I thought the recent spell of good weather would be an opportune time to try it out. The paints which I purchased were a set of dayglo paints, which also glow under UV light, and this gives them an added dimension which…
Creating Artful Christmas Tree Ornaments
Who says that art materials can’t be festive or decorative in their own right? If you’re looking to create an artfully themed Christmas Tree for a studio, creative space, or just at home, here are a few ideas you might like to try… Festive Paint Brushes Give those old worn out paintbrushes a new lease of life by transforming them into decorations. Decorate the handles with brightly coloured paints in any style you choose, and then dip the tips into glitter paint, or PVA sprinkled with glitter. Use the hole in the handle to thread a hanging ribbon through, and away you go. Alternatively you can just arrange them in…
Mini Seaside Dioramas
Summer is here, and our walks along the beach have become more regular again. On these trips I can never resist picking up beach treasures – whether it be in the form of sea-glass, or sea-pottery, interesting pieces of driftwood, and even bits of old rope or other flotsam and jetsam. Collecting it however is one thing, finding something to do with it all is entirely another. So it was good to finally put a few bits and pieces to use to create these Mini Seaside Dioramas. The containers for these were simply some small lidded cardboard boxes I had lying around (I have saved the lids for future use!) …
Doodled & Decorative Autumn Leaves
It’s been a while since I last used autumn leaves for a project – a few years ago I did a project here in which I laminated them to use as suncatchers, and since then I have seen people using leaves for drawing on, and always thought they looked beautiful. However I was never sure what you would do with them afterwards – it seemed the most ephemeral of activities. So this project basically combines the 2 ideas to create something a little more lasting: greetings cards and Christmas tree ornaments. I used gold marker pen to draw the designs onto the leaves – as you can see, the effect…
Creating Fairy Homes at the Beach
With the Autumn fast approaching, we’ve been busy making the most of the last of the warm summer weather to spend time getting creative on the beach again. It’s always fun to make sandcastles, but this time we decided to create miniature fairy-sized homes instead, using only the materials we could find available to hand. Instead of using full sized buckets to make the buildings, we used plastic cups and bottle lids (I found the clear ones were the best as you could see the sand through the sides). First we created a miniature village or castle with conical shell roofs… Then we created a miniature scene with…
Snowflake Colour-In Wrapping Paper
Each year I like to produce something as a Christmas ‘gift’ for readers, so this year’s offering is a snowflake colouring sheet which can also be used as a creative wrapping paper. Colour-in wrapping paper is I think amazingly versatile, offering lots of scope for personalisation by both the giver and the recipient. I think they look just as effective partly coloured as fully coloured, or even left plain. This snowflake themed sheet is very simple, and can be made to look very pretty with the addition of glitter glue, or metallic pens for colouring or outlining. Just click on the image and then right click to download it for…
The Dramatic Art of Shadows
So October is here already, and it’s time to get ready for that festival of all things spooky – Halloween. I have to confess I am not a fan of the blood/gore/horror aspect of Halloween – I’m much too squeamish for that, I prefer the eerie/atmospheric/gothic approach. The kind of scariness that relies more on suggestion and imagination. Shadows are of course one of the simplest yet most evocative things you can use at Halloween to create atmosphere, so I thought I’d do a round-up of shadow themed creative activities to try with children: If you’re looking for some DIY spooky creativity, the Shadow Art Boxes we created a few years…
Postage Stamp Christmas Wrap
Christmas is creeping up ever closer, and for the last few years I’ve tried to offer readers a Christmas gift in the form of a seasonal free printable. I think I must have forgotten in 2013, but in 2012 it was 3 sheets of vintage Christmas wrapping paper, and the year before a printable Christmas Tree template to decorate. This year I’ve put together some sheets of Postage Stamp Christmas wrap using the scanner – one of my favourite tools for art making. My Dad has always collected stamps, but he was having a clear out recently and offered me a large number of Christmas stamps that he’d collected over…
A Card with a View
Another Christmas Card project! This one is a very simple idea which is really easy to make, and has the added benefit of recycling your old Christmas cards, so unless you’ve saved some cards from last year, this may be one to keep for the future! When I was a child, we inherited a few old early 20th century cards from a great-aunt, who had kept them because they were rather more special than your average card. I don’t know what happened to them, but I remember a couple of them in particular took my fancy. These were 3 dimensional snow scenes with a snowy window effect on clear plastic…
Keepsake Christmas Card
Christmas is getting ever closer, and I thought it must be time to start getting things ready preparing our home-made cards. We alsways need plenty of time for this, and this year is no exception. These days rather than making a whole pile of home-made cards at Christmas time, we’ve got a bit lazier and tend to send out just a few to special friends and relatives – this means we can spend a bit more time on them too, so it’s a little less like a production line and the quality is higher! So for this year’s card me and the kids put together something which can also double…
