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…
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…
Children’s Art Temporary Tattoos
Temporary children’s tattoos are undergoing a resurgence of popularity again at the moment, and I thought it might be fun to let the boys create their own tattoos using ink-jet printable tattoo paper This took a bit of tracking down, but eventually I managed to find some. It was easy to use, and the finished product was not only completely unique and personal but also worked really well. I ‘cheated’ a little, in that the artwork the boys produced for the tattoos were just drawings with no colour, so I digitally coloured them in Photoshop first before printing out the tattoos. However this really isn’t necessary, and I…
Experimenting with Oil Pastels
There’s nothing quite like opening a new set of crayons and seeing them laid out all beautiful and pristine ready to use for the first time. I was offered some art materials to test out for Caran d’Ache, and was happy to do so, because although I don’t do a great number of reviews on Artful Adventures, nevertheless good quality free art materials never go amiss, and I genuinely thought I could turn it to use as a piece that would be of interest to readers. For some reason I was expecting pencil crayons to arrive, but what actually turned up was a set of Caran D’Ache Neopastel artists quality…
Creating Thank You Cards with Kids Artwork
It’s that time again – time to make thank you cards for the Christmas presents the boys received, and get them sent off. I have to say it seems to take us longer and longer to do this every year – but I at least, feel guilty if it’s not done, and it’s not really something I can or should do for them. This year I persuaded my younger son to draw some pictures specially so that I could create some cards from them. This I thought might be easier than expecting them both to make a whole pile of cards, only for them to lose interest half way through,…
Kids Artwork – Choosing what to Keep
It’s a perennial problem – of all the mountains of artwork that young children produce, how much of it should you keep? Maybe you are sufficiently ‘ruthless’ to be able to throw it away without a qualm, but at the other extreme if you are a hoarder like me, you may find it difficult to throw any of it away. There comes a time however when rational decisions have to be made if you’re not to be swamped. But how to make them? It can be difficult to create hard and fast rules here, because what makes something special for one person will be entirely different for another, and ultimately…
Photographing Children’s Artwork
If you want to take photos of your children’s artwork for your own projects, perhaps to create your own cards, or to make a photograph, the quality of the photograph is of huge importance. For this reason, I thought it might be worthwhile offering a few simple pointers to getting the best image you can. After all, not everyone has access to a home scanner, and if the artwork is large, then your average home scanner is not an option. At this point I should make it clear that it’s not necessary to have a super dooper all singing all dancing camera to get a good photograph – these days…
Children’s Art Cards
The summer holidays are over, and the kids are back at school – I will miss the morning lie-ins, but I confess that it’s with something of a sigh of relief that I’ve waved them back to school – at least now I can get on with the huge backlog of tasks that have lain undone for weeks while they were off. Their childhood is so different from my own. Summer holidays as I remember them were ones where we were left almost totally to entertain ourselves, whereas now I seem to be my children’s entertainment manager. So I have a huge backlog of arty activities we’ve been busy with…
Art Portfolio Tutorial
Keeping children’s artwork in good condition can sometimes be a challenge. Even if you are ruthless about only keeping the best, there is a tendency for it to get creased and dog-eared. It makes sense to keep it flat, and a traditional portfolio is the ideal way to do this. Yet the choice of portfolios available for children is limited. I couldn’t find one that I liked and most were very small, so I thought I would have a go at making my own instead. This proved to be pretty easy and quite cheap to do, with the added benefit of offering the opportunity to decorate and personalise the cover…
It’s a Boy Thing
As I’ve mentioned before, much of my boys’ creative activity is increasingly being carried out independently from me these days. They’ll find the stuff they want and get on with it, often without my knowledge. Once finished, they’ll sometimes bring the completed work to me, and explain at length exactly what’s going on. Other times I’ll come across something myself later, abandoned in their bedroom. That was the case with this drawing of a robot done by my 7 year old. Lots of his drawings relate to action and adventure, with Star Wars being a particularly popular theme at the moment. I love the way he’s annotated the drawing (complete…
Arty Lavender Sachets
Time is still short for me at the moment, so I hope you won’t mind if this week I use a project that I originally created as a guest post last year. I very rarely do guest posts – not because I’m unwilling to do any, but just because I’m far too shy about putting myself forward for them! These lavender sachets are a simple idea for creating a small gift with your children. I think they would look especially good presented as a set of 3 or 4 in a box, and they are another gift which is both unashamedly sentimental yet also useful – my favourite kind. All…
Children’s Art Lanterns
I love lanterns of all kinds, and paper bag lanterns are one of the simplest to create. In fact you don’t really have to do anything to them at all to create a beautiful lantern, other than put a lamp or candle inside (making sure of course that the flame is protected in a jar). You can use any colour bag, but white bags create the most ethereal lanterns, and will give out the most light. To create children’s art lanterns, you can of course just paint straight onto the bag. The best effect will be obtained if you use a paint that allows light to pass through, such as…
