Flower Fairy Fashions
Warning – if you don’t like fairies, then look away now, as this is an unashamedly girly post. As the mother of boys, I don’t often have the opportunity to indulge my well hidden girly side, but today I’m going to do it. I confess that I’ve always had a soft spot for flower fairies, though it’s not something I indulge very often. It probably started with the set of Flower Fairy books I had as a child, and still have somewhere, much battered, and full of my childish scribbling. The illustrations are beautifully delicate, and so sharply observed. Apparently the author, Cicely Mary Barker’s sister owned and ran a small…
Paint with Bubbles – 3 Ways
Bubble painting is a classic children’s art activity, and it’s easy to see why – it’s easy, cheap, kids love it, and the results are pretty good too, but bubbles are also amazingly versatile, we’ve tried 3 different techniques now, and each one has distinctively different results. Bubble Painting Method#1 The first technique is the one most people will be familiar with. Here, you mix your paint (in this case tempera) with a little water, and a squirt of washing-up liquid, stir it up and then blow into it with a straw to create lots and lots of bubbles. You then gently place the paper over the bubbles to take…
Graffiti Giftwrap
It’s heading towards mid-November already, and I need to start thinking about getting things organised for Christmas. Over the last 12 months or so, I have discovered that I love decorating paper – creating gorgeous effects with paper, paint, crayons, and whatever else I have to hand, so this year I thought it would be fun to create our own giftwrap. I thought creating our own graffiti giftwrap would be particularly fun for the boys to do, so I bought a cheap flip chart pad to use for the purpose. For under £10.00 I got 40 sheets of bright white A1 size paper which is just the right thickness to…
Halloween Scanner Art
As the days grow shorter and the weather gets colder, the shops start to fill up with Halloween related products. In the UK this is a relatively recent phenomenon – when I was a child, although we were aware of Halloween, it wasn’t much ‘celebrated’ as such – there were few parties, and no trick or treating to speak of. All the festivities were reserved more for Bonfire Night on the 5th November. For my Scottish husband though, trick and treating was very much a part of his childhood, so maybe it’s more of a Celtic thing in terms of origin? Who knows. Anyway, the range of products now available…
Watercolour Spray Inks
Ever since I first heard about watercolour sprays, I’ve been wanting to try them out. The ones you can buy ready-made are I discovered quite expensive, so I decided to create my own using the new powdered water-colour inks I’ve recently treated myself to. That way I can control the dilution I want, mix the colours, and be much more extravagant with them as they are so economical to use. So, I mixed up my inks, and bought some travel sized spray bottles to put them in. There are quite a lot of posts around the internet at the moment for using spray paints with kids, more particularly using trigger…
Forest Critters
We were inspired to create some artwork which celebrates the forest. I love trees, and miss them hugely when they’re not around. (I once lived somewhere with very few!) I am now lucky to live somewhere with lots of mature trees around, and find them a constant inspiration as they change through the seasons. And of course I also like to use the materials they provide to create artwork with, so for this post we decided to continue with the scanner art we did last week, but this time using leaves and twigs as our starting point. Of course much of this artwork could just as easily have been created as…
Father’s Day Cards
There’s not long to go now until Father’s Day, so we (or perhaps on this occasion I should say ‘I’) have been busy creating in readiness. This time I have produced a basic colouring sheet that can be used to create a simple A4 size card, which can be decorated however you like, depending on the age of the child. I’ve also produced a smaller ‘DAD’ version, which older children might prefer. These can be found below – just click on each image to open it up then right click to download. DaddyTemplate Dad Template I used gel pens to embellish and decorate the lettering itself, because I wanted detail…
