My daughter loves trying to play with my make-up brushes. So she was excited when I treated myself to new make-up and brushes this week and set my old applicators and brushes aside for her. We thought that the applicators would be fun to paint with. We weren’t wrong.
Cotton swabs are not just for your ears. We use them in art projects often. They are great to paint with. They are fun to craft with as well. We used bare Q-tips to make these simple daisies for the spring, but you could also dip the Q-tips in paint and create other colorful flower creations.
We made pretty Asian style hand fans for the Lunar New Year a few months back. They were such a big hit and so much fun to make that we wanted to make more for the spring and summer. I love these fans. They are simple to make and the kids will enjoy decorating them with their own designs.
When the nice weather hits, we head outdoors. Our days are spent playing in the yard, going on hikes and creating art. Warm weather means that we can start getting messy with the paint and chalk. We love to bring our craft roll (affiliate link) outside and lay it on the driveway and paint in the sun. It all started rather normally. We gathered our paints and brushes and went outside. One of the paint brushes started to roll down our driveway. I stopped it with my foot and grabbed it with my toes and then ding ding ding, we decided to get a little silly.
Recently, we played around with painting on texture and painted on bark from our wood pile. We enjoyed painting the bark. Our finished bark had a very tribal look to it. It was cool and they reminded me of tribal masks. Since that day, I have wanted to try to make tribal masks using bark and paint. It took a few weeks to get to, but we finally had an opportunity and a couple of good pieces of bark to work with.
My daughter loves to draw. She is learning and getting better every day. We found some wonderful art books for her at the library with great techniques and drawing exercises. One that we loved was Art for Kids: Drawing (affiliate link). It is a great book for kids and adults alike. One simple and fun technique that we found in the book is the inspiration for this Easter process art. These watercolor scribble Easter eggs are so easy and they are a joy to make.
We have once again gotten hit by another few days of cold and nasty weather. It has been sleeting and snowing and we have been stuck home, so we were looking for some rainy day fun. We built forts, made things with Legos and played with our toy instruments. The banging of my daughter’s drum gave me an idea. Rainy days are perfect for a little bit of messy fun and this canvas drum painting fits the description of both messy and fun.
Painting with bleeding tissue paper is a favorite of ours. I am not sure what is more fun, ripping up the pieces of tissue paper or using the spray bottle and watching the colors run. Either way, we love this process. We have made snowflakes for the winter and spooky trees for the fall. The spring is here and Earth Day is right around the corner. This bleeding tissue paper Earth seemed like the perfect craft.
I love finding canvases in unusual places. My daughter and I will paint on just about anything, so when my husband brought in a big box of bark to use as kindling for a fire this weekend, we jumped all over it. Painting on nature is a favorite of ours because you can find such a variety of textures. We have painted on flowers. We have painted on rocks. We have painted on leaves, acorns, pine cones and sticks, but painting bark was a first for us.
We have a rhododendron bush in our front yard. I love the leaves from that bush and pick them off often to use for arts and crafts projects with my daughter. The last time we worked with them, my brother-in-law stopped over and suggested that we could make Easter bunnies with them because the leaves looked like bunny ears. Brilliant! Now why didn’t I think of that? Either way, I used his great idea and made this adorable leaf bunny.
