paint cut paste

i’m honestly not sure why N and i have not made many collages before… but we finally did! we gathered up a few magazines, scissors, glue, and a scrap piece of black posterboard i had laying around and got started.

N and i flipped through magazines and she told me the pictures she wanted me to cut out. while she is now able to use scissors, her skills aren’t at the level where she would successfully cut out an image she really wanted. so this time, i was a third hand for her.

N was superhappy to squirt glue onto the backs of the images.

she thought about where she wanted each one placed, and took her time. i was somewhat surprised by the care she took with this.

after the pictures were applied, she wanted to draw on the black paper with crayons, so she created a story involving the pictures and her drawing, and told it as she drew.

when she was finished, she was quite proud!

for my adult art therapy clients, i often have a box of pre-cut collage images from which they can choose pictures that resonate for them without our taking up our sessions hunting through magazines. i may do the same for N when i get a spare moment, by cutting out lots of images for her to have at home for this purpose.

N is a big fan of balloons (like most earthlings) so we blew up a few little ones the other day to play.

leave the balloon blowing to the grown-ups

i remembered i had seen a cool post on ordinary life magic back in the spring involving balloons, yarn, glue, and water. i just love projects that involve the stuff i already have in the house. i thought it’d be fun to try this project outside the other day with our balloons. easy enough, right? well, read on…

if you look at the ordinary life magic post, you’ll see these lovely “yarn eggs” that the hardened-by-glue yarn left behind after the balloons popped. i was excited to end up with some of these skeletal orbs, and had some cool ideas for what we might do with them. so we got started… first, dip a 3 foot long (or so) strand of yarn into a mixture of craft glue and water. during the process, we made several mixtures of the craft glue (i used both elmer’s glue-all and aleen’s original tacky glue intermittently to use up the last of two bottles i had laying around the art room.)

then just begin to wrap the wet, sticky yarn around a partially blown up balloon.

after the balloons were all wrapped in lovely yarn scraps, we hung them in the playhouse to drip dry overnight. (if you’re doing this inside or over a floor you care about, be sure to put a towel down or do it over the bathtub.)

the next day we checked on the balloons, and attempted the next step… pop balloon and peel it away from the yarn. cool, i came prepared with a thumbtack. it was a snap, pop, then crackle moment. as the balloon deflated, it crackled as it took the yarn with it, imploding slowly. no pretty yarn orb.

deflated.

i tried peeling the balloon away from the yarn, but it was harder to do on some balloons than others. perhaps the ones with a thicker glue mixture were more stubborn? here are the sad results we got.

so i wrote to stephanie over at ordinary life magic and asked how she got the lovely results she got in an effort to learn where we might have gone wrong. here was her answer: “ours did that, too – some more than others. i just poked my fingers through the egg, and reshaped the ones that had deflated. you could probably use a spoon or something if you wanted to. they’ll stay if they sag and you reshape them, and then as they dry over days they’ll keep the reshaping.” good tips, though i think it was a little late for our yarn tangles, honestly.

we’ll try again another time, but i always like to post these art-gone-wrong experiences so you all can see our trials and errors. it’s also a nice example of the idea that in art, products are often unpredictable, so it’s all about the process! sometimes the materials dictate what they want to become, and we have the opportunity here to honor that and curb our attachment to results. we can model this for little ones who either can become frustrated and disappointed when art doesn’t turn out how they imagined OR were honestly not as goal-oriented as we were from the beginning, and probably just had fun playing with balloons and sticky goop. for me, the most satisfying part of this was indeed the process…  seeing our balloons all lined up outside on the line to dry was just lovely…

and seeing my little one’s mind excitedly expand to include the idea of using balloons for art materials was priceless!

N’s friend is soon having a mermaid pool party for her fourth birthday, and N is very psyched about this theme! when we were pondering artsy gifts to make for her kindred spirit artist friend, i remembered a sweet idea i’d seen long ago on pink & green mama — clothes pin mermaids!

this post is likely a gift spoiler (sorry in advance to the birthday girl’s parents,) but i’m banking on the fact that the little mermaid can’t read blogs quite yet.

some parts of this craft aren’t super kid-friendly… for example, i began by using my woodburning tool (hot) to create faces and belly buttons on some wooden doll pin clothes pins while N was napping.

i also cut tail shapes out of craft foam.

then i set materials up so N could paint the mermaids when she woke up.

N painted the bottom part of each one with various colors to match the foam tails.

the next part was not kid-friendly either, nor was it momma-friendly. i burnt three of my fingers while hot glueing craft foam (cut into tail shapes) to the slit in each wooden pin. i cut little bikini tops out of felt and N helped to glue these to each mermaid.

we used some yarn for hair. you could use that doll hair you find in the craft store, but i just used yarn we had around the house. unfortunately, i didn’t have a huge selection of hair colors, so we made them all blonde. my blonde girl was cool with this, and the birthday mermaid is blonde, as well, so for these purposes, it works out.

a few will swim in the playsilk moat around N’s fairy treehouse in our playroom.

the rest of these aquatic cuties will make a great addition to the gift package we bring to the mermaid pool party next weekend. now we just cross our fingers for pool party weather to make its way to the bay!

N came home from preschool the other day with the cutest little fishy! all of the credit for this simple craft goes to her amazing preschool teacher for creating fun art projects around this month’s underwater theme. i just thought this easy fish was super-charming!

this is truly a painting, cutting, pasting exercise, so i had to feature it here on paint cut paste! i’m not big on purchasing or using paper plates in my home, but if you’ve got some lying around, this is a nice way to repurpose those last few into fun works of art. (and for that next birthday party, be kind to the earth and use washable plates!) all you need to do is cut a triangle out of one side of the plate (making the mouth) and then tape, glue, or staple it to the opposite side of the fish (to make the tail.)

then paint away… for these fish, N’s classmates used a dollop of silver metallic (almost pearly) non-toxic, water-based activity paint mixed with liquid watercolors. then the kids glued large sequins onto the fish (for shiny scales) and a big googly eye. voila! a school of rainbow fish at school!

i could see these hanging at different lengths from the ceiling for a sea-themed birthday party decoration. N enjoyed doing this so much at school that this little green guy won’t likely be the only fish in our sea.

just a simple little thing to share… one of N’s oldest (well, he’s 3 years young) so, i should say longest friends is celebrating his birthday this month. for a gift, we decided to make a fun little frame commemorating their friendship. (they now live on opposite coasts of the country and haven’t been able to see each other in a while.)

N watercolored an ikea wooden frame with her favorite color – purple. then we collected various trinkets, buttons, shells, her sculpey creations, some shrinky-dink designs, and other findings from our art cabinet, and set out to glue them onto the frame once it was dry.

N drew and wrote a cute little card for him, and we framed a picture of the last time they hung out together.

i’m almost certain that you’ve seen this eco-chic interior design element out there in the d.i.y. blogosphere… the transformation of a paper towel or toilet paper roll into wall art. (who doesn’t drool over design sponge? adore them.) that’s where i first saw this cute project, and it captured my interest, but it seemed a rather adult art project to me. i always get excited about the idea of using things from our recycling bin!

naturally, i wanted N to join in the upcycling fun. i mean, this truly is a paint cut paste project (uh… cut, paint, paste) so we tried it out… cutting through cardboard with kid scissors isn’t too much fun, so i cut up two paper towel rolls into little rings that were about an inch wide. i didn’t measure to be exact – i just eye-balled it.

for some odd reason, i figured that i’d spray paint (alone during nap time: spray paint + kids = no way) the rings white. i thought it’d make it more brilliant when she painted them with colors, but honestly it made no difference. skip this step, unless you want your finished product to be white and modern (aka: not a kid craft.)

when the white paint was dry, the fun began. N chose the paint (we used acrylics) some of the rings lavender and some of them spring green. she had lots of fun painting her hands the rings. she opted to only paint the outsides of the rings (though if you were able to paint the insides, too, the finished product may be more cohesive.)

once the colorful paint dried, we had fun arranging the rings into shapes. i had spray painted a box top white earlier, and N decided this would be her frame, and she wanted to make a flower inside of it. we glued the rings together in a flower shape, holding them with mini clothespins until they were dry. (any clips will work.) if you’re not doing this with kids, staples may be quicker.

after the leaves and petals had adhered together, N drizzled the glue generously onto the back of the flower, and i pressed it into her frame. (elmer’s glue dries clear so no worries on the drizzling.) she was excited about the results!

with the remaining “leaves” we decided to glue them together at random to make a cluster. right now it’s just sort of hanging out in N’s bathroom.

i’m considering doing a natural-colored (no painting involved) version of this for our playroom wall, above N’s fairy treehouse… if i do, i’ll letcha know!

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!