Personalise some Arty Pencils
It’s been a long time since I last added something to this site – life has simply got in the way, with moving home, school holidays, and lots of other things going on. Although there are lots of other potential events on my horizon which might further disrupt attempts to get back to business as usual here, with the kids back at school again, I thought it was about time to give it some attention and make time for creative activities once more. With this in mind, and the usual back to school stocking up with stationery, I’ve been creating some personalised pencils. These are a lovely low-cost gift to…
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It’s been a while since I last did a book review, so when I was given the opportunity to review You Will be Able to Draw by the End of This Book by Jake Spicer, I thought it would be interesting to take a look. I should make it clear here that this book is not aimed at children, but with guidance could be used with older children. Drawing is one of the fundamental foundation skills of art – this is partly I think because the very act of drawing teaches us to observe, and to analyse what we see. However many people who want to draw and paint…
Get Creative with Colouring Sheets
You will sometimes hear it said that colouring-in, however restful or satisfying, isn’t especially creative. However there are in fact lots of ways to get creative with colouring. The beauty of colouring is that it is so very accessible, and requires a minimum of equipment. It is low-cost and low-tech, and can offer an ‘unchallenging’ or ‘safe’ way for those new to art to get started creatively. My particular favourite style of colouring page as a child was landscape scenes – as I coloured them I would pretend I was exploring the scene, and develop stories around it. Now, I find I love the dense detailed all over patterns best,…
Kids Artwork Christmas Keepsake Baubles
I have always loved the creative potential of empty clear glass baubles – I have seen lots of beautiful ideas for filling them with paint or glitter for example, including special messages in them, or using them as a memory jar. So having acquired a few of them recently I was keen to use them on the tree this year, but didn’t have a great deal of time to spend on filling them. So I decided to simply use some old pieces of my boys’ artwork to fill the baubles – it was very easy to do, and the finished result can be as simple or as sophisticated…
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
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Arty Activities at the Beach
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Funky Fish Kids Art Collage
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Snowflake Colour-In Wrapping Paper
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Custom Cover Sketchbooks
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