The holidays may be over, but all of our cardboard boxes left from Christmas deliveries remain. This is great news for us because we love to work with cardboard. With Valentine’s Day just a couple of weeks away, my daughter has been all hearts and flowers, so naturally we put some of our cardboard to good use to make these pretty mixed media heart Valentines together.
Mixed media projects are a favorite of ours. Mixed media is great for preschoolers to adults. I love mixed media and had fun making these winter birds, but for me the best part is watching my 5-year-old during her creative process. It is amazing. I wanted to make a cardinal and my daughter opted for a chickadee or a “chickpea” as she refers to it. We have a printable template for each of these winter birds available for your convenience. 
We got our first real snowfall this weekend. There is nothing like the first snow of the season. It is so magical. We had a great weekend playing in the snow. We made a snowman, of course, but the highlight of our weekend was the snowball fights. I had so much fun watching my little one winding up to throw a snowball at me. Our snowy adventure was the inspiration for this fun piece of mixed media.
We love mixed media art projects. Last winter, we made several mixed media artworks including a Christmas village, a snowy birdhouse and even a cute and cuddly little penguin. This year, we started our first, of I am sure many, Christmas projects with these adorable elf shoes. We say elf shoes, but the fun and focus is on the tights. Break out your paints, newspaper, markers and anything else you can think of and make your own cute and funny elf project.
With fall quickly approaching, pumpkins, apple picking and hayrides have been on our mind. We have also started to think about Halloween. We love Halloween and we especially love cute and spooky Halloween arts and crafts. And for me, nothing quite says spooky like a haunted house.
Corrugated cardboard is a favorite material of ours. The texture of the ridges in the cardboard adds a great feel to any project. I love the earthy look that the cardboard brings to the tree trunk. The crumpled newspaper was fun to work with and form and it added another element of texture to this pretty mixed media project.
There is nothing quite as wonderful as watching your children create. It is a fascinating and beautiful thing. My little girl and I spend a lot of time creating together, but my favorite projects are the ones that she comes up with on her own. This lovely sea star was one of her ideas and she was so eager to share it with me.
My daughter loves Dr. Seuss. Whenever we go to the library, she always looks through his books for one that we haven’t read in a while or for an old favorite. The Lorax is one of those favorites. It is a favorite of mine as well.
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We have been on a huge mixed media kick lately and I thought that the truffula trees from ‘The Lorax’ would make a beautiful project for us to do together.
We don’t throw anything away in our house. We save cardboard tubes, egg cartons and every little scrap of paper. We work with construction paper a lot and we love to use scrapbook paper for our projects as well. Every left over piece of paper goes into a drawer in my daughter’s craft room. The drawer is full of scraps. You may wonder why we would save a drawer of scrap paper. Here is one reason that we love to hold on to these pieces.
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We dug through our drawer and found the colors and patterns of paper that we wanted to work with. We looked for larger pieces of scrap. I love the look of torn paper, so we tore our paper into different sized strips and tossed them into a box.
Hearts, hearts, hearts, my daughter love hearts. She doodles them and cuts them out of construction paper all of the time. With her love for hearts, Valentine’s Day is the perfect holiday for my little love bug.
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We have been dabbling a lot with mixed media art. My daughter and I love doing these projects together. I had an idea to make a set of love birds using heart shapes.