paint cut paste

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!

i just saw this idea for making an adorable autumn tree on my amazingly talented pink & green mama friend’s blog, and we had to try it out. she was inspired by that artist woman’s blog on a similar project, which is so lovely! these trees are so cool for fall, and it’d be great to make one for every season!

creativitree in bloom

we actually did it a bit differently than my friend did, as she used watercolors, which would really work super-great. though today we were already painting with acrylics, so i just made a very watery brown and put a blob of it at the bottom of a piece of our paper. i showed N how to blow the paint using a straw. (admittedly, i had to help her out a bit in the wind velocity department.)

blowing like the wind

we blew this way and that way to make the tree grow tall and branch out in random directions.

when it was nearly dry, N glued colorful pieces of tissue paper to the tree to make leaves. (pink & green mama did this step before the painting, which also seems to work wonderfully.)

we hung our windblown tree outside to dry in the blowing wind.

N's tree