paint cut paste

one of the staples of the waldorf kindergarten art curriculum is wet-on-wet watercolor painting. in N’s class, painting day happens weekly, on “rice day.” often days of the week are identified by the snack at her school, and every monday it is rice with gomashio. (i’m so addicted to gomashio -have you made this stuff?? i digress…)

N wanted to “play teacher” after a rainy school day a couple weeks ago, and decided to teach me how they do their wet-on-wet watercoloring in class. this was sort of impromptu so i didn’t set up our colorations liquid watercolors in the way i usually do, which is to put out some combination of primary colors (red, yellow, and blue… or cyan, magenta, and yellow, etc.) in baby food jars. i LOVE using baby food jars for liquid watercolors because i can put the lids back on them and save the remaining paint for another day. no wasted paint, and a good use for the zillions of jars i scored on freecycle.

on this painting day, we broke out our favorite palette of watercolor cakes and some student-grade watercolor paper. for intentional projects, we often use the heavy strathmore watercolor paper, and we also keep a large box of canson watercolor paper for N to use since she tends to blow through at least 10 sheets in a sitting, and paints often throughout the week. it’s not the toothiest, heaviest of papers, but you can’t beat $14 for 100 sheets of watercolor paper. we were all set to begin. the first thing we had to do to prepare our paper was to round the corners. all of the paper in the waldorf kindergarten has been pre-cut (by teachers) to have rounded edges.

then N showed me how to get our sheets of paper wet in the sink and how to blot them gently with a cloth before painting. she set up each of our painting areas how they do at school, and when it was time to paint, she recited the verse the teacher says as they wet their brushes to begin:

“the little bird comes down and picks up peter paintbrush, and peter paintbrush rests on the earth below. peter paintbrush dips himself into the well and dries himself off on the blue cloth and goes to play with the rainbow fairies.” 

then we painted together while N, “playing teacher,” sings the painting song her teacher quietly sings during painting time, which goes like this:

“rainbow fairies come my way. share with us your golden light today.” [repeat until your brain is numb.]

as i’ve mentioned before, all of the art in the waldorf kindergarten is marked with the child’s symbol (usually something in nature like the sun, a tree, a flower, a ladybug) instead of their name. because i did not have a symbol yet, N assigned one to me — i am the moon. i love that. so i labeled my painting as such, and included the date.

we generally paint (and make most projects) on a well-loved art board, but i saw this handmade painting board for wet-on-wet watercoloring on the waldorf homeschooling blog, and my new obsession is to make a couple of these for these peaceful times when peter paintbrush gets to play with those crazy rainbow fairies.

on a sick day home from school earlier this week, N got on a (pre)origami kick. i went out to see art therapy clients in the morning while she and her dad stayed home and created folded paper fortune tellers (and puppets!) did you create these as a kid? oh, it so brought me back to the 80s when i arrived home midday to see them excitedly playing with their creations.

my husband, craig, created one and N created one herself alongside him. (i wish he had taken photos of this!) the one you see above is one she created and colored. craig wrote the color names on it, N did the numbers inside, and craig made up the fortunes.

i love the fortunes they came up with on the inside, like “you will have magic in your hands” and “you will be surrounded by loving friends” and “you will discover a secret cave with treasure” — among others.

hours of enjoyment, i tell ya!

after N folded another one, she colored a face on it to make a puppet. she noted that “it’s hard to color it when it’s already folded!”

later in the day, N emerged from her room with “envelopes” she had created on her own by folding paper and taping it. this is what i found on my dresser as a gift.

and when i opened it, LOVE inside…

we capped off our paper-folding sick day with making origami bunnies that our friends over at tinkerlab happened to post that same morning my husband initiated paper fortune tellers. i love how the collective unconscious works, don’t you?

making our tinkerlab-inspired bunnies

perhaps we’re ready to try out some other origami animals. i was saving it for an older age, but we’ll see how it goes if the interest is piqued right now… at what age do you think origami is appropriate for kids?

with valentine’s day approaching, my daughter has been interested in creating sweet cards for family and friends. she is of the age where she wants some of the creations to remain a secret. (shhh, i’ve found a few strategically hidden in her basket of play silks – one for MOM – but i didn’t peek at it further!) i decided that since she’s taking the reigns on all things valentine, i’d create a DIY valentine supply collection to support her endeavors.

i repurposed a melissa & doug toy box (aren’t they great for drawer organization and tiny toy storage?) into a valentine creation station! (when i read to N what i wrote on the sign on the side of the box, she asked me skeptically, several times, if i made that rhyme up myself. there are these fleeting little moments when they’re so easy to please, huh? hee hee )

i stocked the box with blank cards and envelopes that were in various shades of red, pink, and purple. there are also small pieces of decorative papers, some pre-punched paper hearts (some leftover from our garland,) the paper heart craft punch (because she can do this herself at this age, too! yay!), fuzzy balls, stickers, sparkly gems, paper flowers, markers, colored pencils, crayons, glue sticks, scissors, and glue.

N was so excited when she saw the festive box on the coffee table, and she set to work right away on making the first valentine for, of course, HERSELF. you’ve gotta be your own valentine first, right? (that’s some healthy self-esteem right there! you go girl!)

then she moved on to creating a bunch of love notes for family members.

here’s a collection of her lovely custom valentines, ready to address and mail – right under our LOVE sign!

i hearted tinkerlab’s recent post about how she made a valentine buffet for her children, too! do you and your children create valentines in your home? how do you invite them into this process?

we are delighted to take part in tinkerlab’s february creative challenge: make art out of paper bags!

acquiring the art materials for this challenge so brought me back to the first week i lived in boulder, colorado, in 2002. i went to whole foods without my own reusable grocery bags (the horror!) and got reception that was… well, not unlike jack mcbrayer’s recent guest appearance for the grocery bag sketch on portlandia (who else thinks this show is brilliant??! click text above to watch the sketch.) so, yeah… i related to jack’s character when we scored these paper bags from whole foods last week. i wanted to shout, “it’s for art’s sake, people! we’re upcycling!”

we set out on our paper bag art adventure without knowing the destination (er, product.) N wanted to “paint the bags like huge canvases.” so we started there.

she created large blocks of carefully selected colors on them with large sponge brushes and paint rollers.

it was like a rothko study in our play shed where they hung to dry.

after the paint was dry, N decided she wanted to make a weaving. before cutting up the paper bags, N wanted to color on some of them with her metallic creamy crayons.

we cut the bags into strips which were about an inch thick and 16 inches long. then N laid them out in the order she wanted, horizontally, and then vertically.

she chose some ribbons to use in the weaving, as well.

together, we wove. over, under, over, under. N practiced at lifting every other piece of paper and guiding the next one through it.

the finished weaving was so vibrant and lovely!

we decided to frame it in an ikea ribba shadowbox frame, size 20.5 x 20.5, without the mat. i put a few dots of glue between some key parts of the weaving to hold it together, and used double-sided tape to adhere the weaving to white cardstock/posterboard. this piece is such a fun addition to N’s colorful bedroom!

check out my other blogger friends’ paper bag creations around the web:

Imagination Soup, Hands On: As We Grow, Child Central Station, Putti Prapancha, Irresistible Ideas for Play-Based Learning, Teach Preschool, The Chocolate Muffin Tree, Nurture Store, Small Types,Make Do & Friend, The Imagination Tree, Toddler Approved, Red Ted Art, Kids in the Studio, Rainy Day Mum, Glittering Muffins, Sense of Wonder, Mom To 2 Posh Lil Divas, Come Together Kids, My Creative Family, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, A Mom With A Lesson Plan, Angelique Felix, The Golden Gleam, Clarion Wren, Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo, Let Kids Create, De tout et de rien, PlayDrMom, Creativity My Passion, paint cut paste, Kiwi Crate, Tinkerlab

if you’d like to share in the paper bag creative challenge fun, YOU are invited to join the linky below with you and your kiddos’ paper bag creation!

also, you can enter to win a $100 VISA gift card and three-month subscription to kiwi crate. to find out how by visiting this link over on tinkerlab or the kiwi crate blog. (pssst – the contest involves the beloved pinterest, so you know it’s gonna be fun!)

we’ve yet to really begin valentine creation over here. generally, we wait for N’s birthday party to be over before we go on to prepare for valentine’s day. but there is one little heart craft i’ve indulged in, because, as my pinboard says, i’m a sucker for garland. and paint chips. and hearts. and easy things to sew.

i pinned this about 6 months ago, originally from ohcrafts.net. so i’ve been psyched to do it for a while, and tiz the season now. i grabbed my trusty heart hole punch and some paint chips from my stash (yes, all of us crafty mom bloggers have paint chip stashes. we’re a weird breed.)

i punched away until there were hearts of many rainbowy colors.

even just this heart confetti is splendid to look at and to play with!

the little one had fun using the punched out paint chips as stencils.

cute as they were on their own, i still took it to the sewing machine and fed each one through while keeping a fairly steady, slow pace with the needle. it was easier than i thought, and the machine was forgiving if i had a few stitches in between each heart. for me, that was an experiment, as i am still learning how to sew.

stitched together

i heart this!

then i got heart-happy and stitched a few more hearts to some colorful paper. i think i’ll add these to some valentine’s day cards soon!

this garland looks festive in our kitchen right now, but notice that hearts are top heavy… expect some twists and turns, or maybe opt for sewing them up double-sided.

this also might make a cute addition to our february mantel, which i’ll share when the time comes (after birthday season!)

strung along

ooo, that title sounds yummy, cozy, and wintry! happy winter solstice! (which, by the way, is also my birthday!) we posted about paper snowflakes last year, but this year we let our coffee filters and cupcake liners help us out with creating snowflakes!

one of our advent activities was “make snowflakes!” and it came along with this lovely book full of photographs of real snowflakes, for inspiration. (since we can’t observe the real thing where we live.)

the thin papers coffee filters and cupcake liners are made from are so kid-friendly to cut in thick, folded stacks. their round shape is perfect for snowflakes and makes it easy to fold them into six sections, as snowflakes are six  sided. so we put on the christmas carols, prepared some pear cider, and got to work.

i also realized that if i left pre-folded cupcake liners on N’s art desk, snowflakes would spontaneously appear – like magic!

we taped ours to a front window in our home, to be admired by passers-by. day by day, the snowfall is thickening around these parts… happy winter!

i think we’ll leave these up all winter long!

we are delighted to have been invited to be a part of tinkerlab’s creative challenge this month! our tinkerfriend has asked us to upcycle magazines to create a project that is child-directed. given all of the junk mail and catalogs inundating our mail box this season, i was more than happy to accept this challenge so we could upcycle some of this unnecessary paper! (why all the catalogs from stores who have web sites?!)

the other night, while sorting through the stacks of catalogs, i said to my daughter, “i wonder what we could make out of all of these extra magazines…” with christmas undoubtedly on the brain, she immediately responded, “ornaments!” but of course! she said she wanted to rip them up and glue them to balls. sounds like a plan to me — so she got right to work on the ripping that evening (thus the dark photo. my apologies: it’s a casualty of wintertime blogging.)

the next day we took a trip to michaels and scored these brown paper ornament shapes for 60 cents each (which turned out to be even cheaper with a coupon – love it.)

later (and again after a mad-early sunset,) N got to work mod podging her “magazine confetti” (as she termed it) onto the ornaments.

once they were covered (and she was kind of bummed by the white look of wet mod podge initially) she said she wanted them to sparkle more, and asked for glitter. [artsy-mom guilt-producing confession: i so HATE loose glitter.] while i knew glitter would be a lovely and festive addition to something for our tree, i shuddered when N asked for it. then sighed a bit of relief when i realized quickly that we didn’t have to sprinkle it onto the ornament. i suggested stirring the glitter into the mod podge and painting another coat of glittery mod podge onto the ornaments. she was sold - phew!

we hung the ornaments to dry (which only took about an hour actually – not bad in terms of fairly instant gratification.)

and they are super cool, colorful, and sparkly on our christmas tree!

thank you, rachelle, for including us in this challenge!

check out all of the other amazing bloggers below who gave their junk mail a second life:

• tinkerlab (our lovely hostess!)
• kids in the studio
• teach mama
• the imagination tree
• childhood 101
• teach preschool
• hands on as we grow
• the artful parent
• a mom with a lesson plan
• toddler approved
• kiwi crate
• art 4 little hands
• red ted art
• the chocolate muffin tree
• imagination soup
• michelle’s charm world
• messy preschoolers
• mommy labs
• putti prapancha
• sun hats & wellie boots

visit each of their amazing projects on the linky below – so many fun ideas! there’s a second linky at the bottom where you can join in the fun and add your own upcycled magazine ideas, too!

add your own ideas here: