paint cut paste

just a petite post about a big butterfly. last year we made these little coffee filter butterflies, that i blogged about recently.

then an art therapist friend gave me a few of these huuuuge coffee filters. so one rainy day, we colored all over one of them with markers, like we’ve done before to make coffee filter flowers.

then we set it outside in the rain. (we kept ours out there too long -while we went to ballet class- and most of the color washed away. usually you can just remove it from the rain after about 5 minutes of getting soaked.)

once it was dry, N wanted to wear it.

then we gathered it in the center, paperclipped it, and attached some twisted pipe cleaners to the center for the butterfly’s body. now N’s playhouse (<– stay tuned) has a large lepidoptera friend in the window, catching the light.

you don’t have to go big to do this — regular, human-sized coffee filters will do.

when i saw the rainbowy goodness emanating from these doily hearts on 4 crazy kings, i knew N would love to make some to proudly display in our window for valentine’s day!

i found some doilies in the shape of hearts at michael’s – a pack of 12 for $2.50. after i finished asking myself, “who am i??? am i seriously buying doilies!!?!” N and i headed to the register with my 40% off coupon. cheap. i got over it.

after naptime, N got right to work watercoloring the doily paper. we taped it down to her art board with one little roll of scotch tape in the center, so as not to move the doilies around too much while painting. i advise using a very soft-bristled brush for these for the same reason.

after we saw the pretty, lacy patterns the paint was making on the art board when we peeled the heart away, we thought it’d be fun to tape the doilies to paper to savor those lace prints.

and those papers turned out super-cool and will make nice valentines on their own.

once the hearts were finished, we put them in our front window. even though painted only on one side, they make pretty suncatchers. (the pic below is actually the back of them – the unpainted side – with dusk light showing through.) if we had used watered-down acrylic or tempera paints, the paint might have bled through to the other side even more for a double-sided look, and might have been more vibrant like the one i saw on the blog that inspired this art task. i feel like if we found smaller doilies at the store, they would make beautiful garland when strung together.

what a cheery way to say “happy valentine’s day!” to our neighbors passing by… (and a way to publicly admit that i bought doilies…??)

even a lovely pink flowering tree for valentine's day!

i’m not in love with plastics, but who can resist the magic of shrinky dinks? a couple of days ago, my mom, N, and i potted a little plant-window herb garden for our kitchen. then we decided that the herbs needed name tags.

hello my name is: basil

sure, there are so many wonderful materials and ways to create waterproof plant ID tags out there, but i immediately thought of how much fun N has been having with coloring and scribbling lately, so why not color on shrinky dink sheets to make tags? today we headed to michael’s to get shrinky dinks (we opted for the “frosted: ruff n’ ready” kind,) and N got busy decorating the pages with regular colored pencils. if you get the frosted ones, directions say to color on the rough side.

then i cut her drawings into simple oval shapes (any shape will do — it’d be fun to make tiny animals, flowers, etc.) i wrote the herb names on the shiny side of the plastic sheet with a sharpie. (how i adore sharpies.)

cut and labeled

we heated our toaster oven to 325 degrees and watched as they magically condensed into tiny, thick, hard plastic discs.

we attached craft picks (popsicle sticks, lollipop sticks, narrow dowel rods all work, too) to them using superglue (e6000 industrial glue is what the shrinky dink company recommends for the best adhesion.) if you wanna skip this step, cut shrinky dink paper tags into a long, rectangle with a point at the bottom or cut a post shape into the bottom of your desired shape and just push the one piece into the soil.

and now our little garden friends are ready to have a little meet & greet in our window sill while we make a beautiful herbed quiche.

nice to meetcha! wanna eatcha!

p.s. i punched holes into some of the extras (before baking) and made gift tags for future use.

for charmed gift packages

we’ve just made a visit to a wonderful local butterfly pavilion. N has had butterflies on the brain ever since and wanted to make one. i saw this melted crayon shaving project online a while back, and i figured we could make a butterfly to hang in a window.

first, i found extra crayons we had laying around and shaved them with a potato peeler while N napped. (if you do this with your child, it requires supervision, as the peelers can be sharp!) i grouped the colors into four different bowls so that it would be pleasing for my daughter to blend them, though it would be fine for them all to be mixed together initially, too.

crayon shavings

i taped wax paper down onto N’s little table, and displayed the colorful bowls for her. when she saw this project set up, she got very excited and said, “mommy, i love to make pictures! do you love to do this too?” then she got busy, sprinkling the crayon shavings onto the wax paper. she moved them around with her hands, and seemed to enjoy the tactile nature of this project for quite a while.

when she was finished, we made sure the crayons shavings were arranged very close together, with little or no space in between them. i taped another sheet of wax paper over top, and laid down a dishtowel on top of that. i set the iron to “cotton” and once it was hot, i ironed over the dishtowel with the purpose of melting the crayon shavings together. i learned, in my first time doing this today, that it is probably best not to move the iron back and forth because it can create a snag in the wax paper. rather, you can just press the iron down over the area. i also learned that if you plan to hang this in a window, use thin layers of crayon shavings to make it translucent rather than opaque. ours has spots of both.

after, it looked like this:

melted crayons held up to the light

after the sandwiched wax cooled off, we decided to cut it into the shape of a butterfly to hang in the window. you can cut this into endless shapes, or leave the sheet as is, if you’d like. after we cut it, i ironed the edges of the cut butterfly again (under the towel) to seal it, as i noticed some rogue crayon shavings escaping the sandwich. i poked two holes into the butterfly (with a straight pin) and strung some embroidery thread through them to hang N’s creation in the window. almost like stained glass, here is N’s new playroom decoration:

butterfly suncatcher

admiring her work

this project can be done to make stained glass-like art. it would be a cute way to make small, handmade ornaments as gifts. it can also be done on white paper. (i think glossy fingerpainting paper would work well) to do a melted crayon picture. instead of scattering the crayons randomly, your kid can create a picture or pattern with them, too. many options, all colorful and beautiful!