paint cut paste

there’s a lot of fingerpainting going on in my house. yep, it is one of the choice art activities for two-year-olds. many of novi’s fingerpaintings remain in-tact in her mom-made portfolio (two pieces of poster board bound at 3 edges.) while some fingerpaintings take on new life.

a full fingerpainting

one of my favorite things to do with the fingerpaintings is to find interesting sections of them and cut them out. then i paste them onto blank greeting cards. i send these as thank you notes, birthday cards for novi’s friends, etc. all are custom pieces of art! (the grandparents love getting their paws on these sorts of things!)

another idea i saw on sarah jane studios blog was to cut the paintings into animal silhouettes. for novi’s grandma’s birthday, i created a cat shape (grandma loves cats) of my own and traced it onto one of novi’s bright and beautiful paintings and cut it out. i glued it to a nice heavy piece of white stock. (this is truly a paint cut paste project!) then i got an inexpensive frame at the craft store, and a great birthday gift came to life.

grandma's birthday cat

for mothers’ day, i was inspired to make a little cut-out image from lots of colorful fingerpainted scraps for novi’s other grandmother, who she lovingly calls “gwee” and it turned out kinda cute.

novi & gwee

so why not repurpose the thousands of fingerpaintings you might have stuck on your fridge into some cute gifts and cards?

Related posts:

1. sweet stationery
2. painting al fresco
3. marbled paper
4. hands down fun