paint cut paste

one year ago, when N was 26 months old, we went to a spring festival where they offered many crafts for the kids. this is an easy and fun one that N enjoyed making — clothespin butterflies! all you need are a few household items: a pipe-cleaner, a clothespin, and a coffee filter, as well as some markers.

first, let your child’s imagination run wild in coloring all over the coffee filters with the markers. if it is raining when you do this – you know those spring showers can be an artistic blessing – then put the colored (with a water-based marker) filters onto a cookie sheet outside for a minute to let the colors bleed, then dry them out before proceeding. you can see that effect from when we made coffee filter flowers last year. even if it’s not raining, the butterflies can be lovely. just let your child color away until his or her heart is content.

then bend a pipe cleaner (or half of one, actually) into an antenna shape. crinkle your coffee filter in the center and clip that into the clothespin along with the pipe cleaner. and there you have your winged springtime friend…

flutterby - ours got a bit wrinkled, but you get the idea

we’ve done this blog before… a wax resist lesson with crayons and watercolors… but this time N reeeally got the idea and had a ton of fun doing so.

it helped her to have a concept like “things that are in the sky” to draw, and then to paint a blue sky around that. N chose to draw a tree and a sunshine with crayon, and then paint the sky blue.

other ideas could be to have your child draw “things in the grass” like flowers and bugs, etc, and paint the grass around it. or “things in the ocean” and paint the water around it, etc. you get the idea. i realized that this sort of directive helps to make this art task come to life.

then we moved onto some other mixed-media crayon/watercolor pieces…

N: "this is julie, and she has the sun on her face so it's yellow"

when i was a little girl, i used to love melting down my old crayons into new and improved crayon shapes, so i thought this would be fun to do with N this year. (for some reason, my childhood memories of melted wax involve styrofoam meat trays…??) we have a heart mini-muffin pan, which is fitting for the season. my ubercrafty friend over at pink and green mama did this with her daughter last year, as well, so i checked out her blog to learn about the oven settings.

all year, N and i have saved up broken crayons and crayons from restaurants.

N helped me to peel off the paper and break them into small chunks. (fyi: peeling cheap restaurant crayons is not the most fun task.)

we divvied the chunks up into the heart pan.

then we baked them at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes. i CAREFULLY had to carry the tray across the kitchen (minimal wax drippage onto new kitchen sisal rug. ick.) to the fridge where i set them to cool for about 15 minutes. to my surprise, they popped out of the tray very easily.

we put each one into a little valentine bag with a nametag on it and a note in it saying “i heART you” for all of N’s friends. (hey, puns are okay for toddlers.)

though some of the baby siblings of N’s friends, who are not yet in the crayon stage, got some felt hearts that i sewed for them instead.

put a little ART in your heART, valentine!

among my favorite art media are fat, creamy, colorful oil sticks. it is so satisfying, the way they glide smoothly across a page and deposit ultra-rich colors… kind of like using fat oil pastels, but somehow creamier. anyway, i found the kid version of these.

the goods

alex’s creamy crayons aren’t cheap, but they’re so worth it. we put the matte and metallic sets on N’s holiday wishlist, and gwee (what N calls my mom) came through! the other day we tried them out, and just as i suspected, N got into the flooooow.

the cool thing about these crayons is that unlike oil sticks, they are watersoluable (yum, watersoluble crayons. don’t get me started on my boyfriend, caran dache.) so you (um, i mean your little one) can paint over them with a wet paintbrush to blend the colors together for a paint-like effect.

N had a lot of fun “painting” with these schmooove crayons.

person, flower, tree, sunshine

i know this isn’t an art activity per se, but when i find a fun art medium that helps kids to really let go and enjoy the sensory experience of art-making, i always want to shout it from the rooftops… blogtops… blogosphere…

while we’re on the topic of personalized cards, i thought i’d share another little idea along those lines. N will be turning three at the end of this month, and together we made the invitations to her birthday party. N is really into fairies, so she wanted a pixie party where all of her friends would wear wings, so of course the invites had to follow suit.

i save all of N’s completed coloring books because they’re full of little gems. she has a fairy coloring book that she completed in the fall, so we pulled this one out and selected a few fairies from it – one for each of her friends. we cut them out and glued them to blank cards with a glue stick.

i typed up the party details and glued them to the inside. (photo retouched to remove our personal info, of course.)

a super simple idea… but just a reminder that you can repurpose those coloring book pictures into invitations, greeting cards, stationery, wrapping paper, and all sorts of sweet artsy goodies of any theme!

we’ve been traveling for the holiday, thus we haven’t been crafting at home or updating this blog as often. hope you all had a wonderful holiday! we did, however, find a fun, travel-friendly art material on our vacation. how many parents out there hover while your kids are creating with markers, for fear that your couch and walls will soon be decorated with doodles? well, have no fear – some clear markers are here! i know they’re not that new, but they’re new to me and N as of this trip: crayola color wonder!

crayola color wonder magic markers is sorta more like… “i wonder where the color is.” these seemingly clear markers show up only on the special paper that crayola also provides. these were absolutely perfect for the airplane, especially the travel pack that we got with (who else?) the tinkerbell fairies all ready to be colored by my little fairy.

she had a blast on the plane with her new “magical markers!” after she got over the lack of instant gratification — it takes a wee bit of time before the color shows up.

bonus: she didn’t scribble all over delta’s lovely seat cushions (though she totally should have! grrrrr, airlines!) and if she had, no one would have known.

i’m not necessarily a person who stresses staying inside the lines… but once N was showing interest in “coloring in” everything she drew on her magnadoodle, i realized that she’d probably love coloring books. i was right!

i found these great do-a-dot activity books that have large color blocks to color in, which is great for toddlers and young preschoolers. (i think these books are intended to go with the do-a-dot paints, but good ol’ crayons do the trick.)

i gave N a set of crayons and her new animal coloring book, and she sat at her little table in the kitchen and colored for over an hour (while i made tuscan kale soup for dinner) and she talked with me about all sorts of imaginal things while she worked, and made up rhymes and songs.

as an art therapist, i often lean toward free expression and art activities that are not pre-fabricated (like coloring books are;) however, coloring books can be a wonderful way of fostering confidence and pride in a young artist. aside from the obvious lessons of color, shape, and line, they metaphorically teach boundaries and limitations, which are skills my 2-year-old is working on in her life.

introducing coloring books a year ago led to a lot of scribbling over the pre-drawn images (also awesome,) but when i gave N the coloring book yesterday, i saw that she is now ready and interested in coloring the shapes. i saw firsthand how coloring books can increase concentration in an activity and diligence at a task. and aside from all of that psychobabble mumbo-jumbo, they’re just fun, and they give momma an opportunity to cook dinner without resorting to plugging her into little bear. (<– OMG, i just saw at that link that they have little bear printable coloring pages… this blends N’s greatest loves – art and little bear. must print immediately.) happy coloring!