Tag
process
Paint Blot Abstract Printing
My daughter & I have been having fun with ink blots since she could speak. It has always been fascinating to hear what she saw in her blots. The other part of forming them are that they are just plain pretty to look at & lots of fun to make.
Jackson Pollock Inspired Canvas Art
Jackson Pollock Inspired Canvas Art
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Yesterday, my daughter & I experimented with painting with rubber thimbles. Her thimble finger painting reminded me of a Jackson Pollock painting. I told my daughter this & she replied “What’s a Pollock?” I showed her some photos of his art and explained to her about his dripping & splatter techniques. I thought the best way to explain to her would be to make some art inspired by his work ourselves.
Luckily, I always have canvases in the house just in case. 
We laid down drop cloths & cardboard before starting our messy project & then put down our blank canvas.
We watered down acrylics paints for our project.
I laid out medicine droppers, pipe cleaners, craft sticks & assorted paint brushes for us to use.
We used the pipe cleaners to slap paint onto the canvas.
We used the medicine dropper to drip & squirt the paint out onto the canvas. We did paintings with medicine droppers a few weeks ago & Mai loved it, so this was by far her favorite part. She used the dropper for the majority of the project.
She spread a little bit of paint with the craft stick & had fun shaking & splatting the paint brushes. She was so enthusiastic about shaking her brush that some paint did make it off the drop cloth & onto the floor. Oops! Don’t worry. It came right up.
She kept going until we used up all of our paint.
Here was the finished project.
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Melted Crayon Hearts
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My daughter received a new book from her cousins on Christmas. It has since been promoted to her favorite book.
‘The Day The Crayons Quit‘ is a funny book about a group of frustrated crayons that air their grievances to their owner with individual letters to him. In only a short couple of weeks, my daughter has memorized the book from cover to cover. We read it every day, sometime multiple times a day. It made me realize how neglected her own crayons have been. Mai is much more interested in paint & markers these days, but I had a project that I thought might change her mind.
Melted Crayon Hearts
This is a messy project. Lay down paper or a drop cloth for easier clean up.
We started with a piece of cardboard. I cut the cardboard into heart shapes & used a paper hole punch to poke a hole in the hearts to be able to add ribbon or string to later.
We grabbed any unwrapped crayons that we had in our collection to start. We tried a number of different methods to achieve our final projects. We started by holding the crayon on the cardboard & using the blow dryer on a low-speed, high heat setting. Mai needed assistance with this because our dryer to too heavy for her to hold with one hand. I held the hair dryer for her as she worked the crayon around. *Operate caution as hair dryers can get very hot on the skin*
Next we cut small chunks of crayon and laid them a couple of pieces at a time on the heart. I let Mai operate the hair dryer using 2 hands. This created a different effect as the melted crayon ran on its own pattern. I would suggest putting your project into a box or something contained if using small pieces as they do blow around a bit.
My daughter came up with another idea as well. She grabbed a paint brush and pushed around her melted crayon and painted it on. The crayons cooled quickly, so she had to use the dryer often.
When the crayon cooled & dried, we wrapped a ribbon through the holes.
This was a fun project. Mai loved watching the crayons melt. When the crayons got shiny, she knew that they were melting and that she could use them. “Mama, it melts just like an ice cube.” When we finished, she even asked if we could melt more crayons tomorrow.
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Mixed Media Collages For Kids
Ever since we introduced our daughter to cutting & her safety scissors, all she wants to do is cut. I have scraps of paper lying around everywhere. We have done several crafts & activities to feed her new-found love for cutting. Her new thing is to draw pictures and cut them out & then glue them together in a collage on another piece of paper. She refers to these as “her mosaics”.
She loves making these and each one always tells a story. Last night, we cut up some of the scraps into shapes.
I intended to use them to make a shape craft, but Mai had another idea in mind. She grabbed some shapes & wanted to paint them. I gave her some paints & she painted away.
She had a small cupcake liner full of glitter from a previous project that was still out. She dumped that onto one of her paintings & then proceeded to paint the inside of the liner too. “Look mama, doesn’t this painting look like Starry Night?”, she said about one of her paintings.
I handed her more shapes & we pulled out some other art supplies to use on our shapes. She grabbed crayons, markers & colored pencils. She pulled out glue & some buttons too and we worked on more shapes.
She grabbed a circle & drew a picture. She explained to me that it was a memory ball just like in the movie ‘Inside Out’. She drew a girl crying in the middle of the ball and told me it was Sadness.
This piece was a slice of pepperoni pizza because she looooves pepperoni pizza.
I made a few shapes too.
We let the paint dry on our pieces while we cleaned up & got ready to go to bed. Right before bed, we glued the shapes onto another piece of construction paper.
She then used markers to finish off her collage by coloring in some of the free space. “Let’s paint more!!” Not tonight little girl. It is time for bed. We can paint more tomorrow, but until then have sweet dreams about Starry Nights and pizza.
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