paint cut paste

i’ve had a pack of bleeding art tissue paper in my art supply stash for a while – unopened. the other day seemed like a great time to break it out and make some colorful “paintings” with it!

N and i cut and tore various colors from the large sheets of tissue paper. we then arranged them onto white cardstock-weight paper. N opted for a graphic mix of shapes and colors, while i attempted a sunset-over-water scene.

after the tissue paper was arranged on our pages, N got some practice with the squirt bottle while spraying our pictures with water.

she had so much fun with it that she found some narrow strips of paper and asked if she could make bookmarks this way. sure! (repeat process.) then we enjoyed watching the colors blend and ooze across the wet paper.

we let the “paintings” dry outside while we ate dinner.

after dinner N pulled the tissue paper off of the pictures. our results were lovely and somewhat unexpected. we found that the reds, greens, and some of the blues transferred very well, but the yellow blocked out all color and registered as white, whereas the orange created yellow prints.

i’m wondering if we’d get more saturated results if we added a bit of white vinegar to our water squirt bottle…? maybe next time. have you tried printmaking in this way?

over the weekend, we went over to N’s classmate’s house for a playdate. N’s friend “s” has a super-creative momma, karen, who planned out a cute halloween craft for the kids to do together. she agreed with my photographing their process and sharing it with you on my blog. so here are our silly spiders!

the night before the playdate, karen covered a few styrofoam balls with orange tissue paper (using glue) and gathered other materials such as orange and black pipe cleaners, googly eyes, puffy balls, feathers, and glitter glue. you could do this with black tissue paper to make black spiders, too, or any other color, of course!

we started by asking the kids how many legs a spider has, and the girls began to stick the metal pipe cleaners (legs) into the ball (body) to create the spider’s form.

dress-up time was right before art time, so N was dressed as tigger here

then the fancy decorating began. they glued on googly eyes and puff ball noses.

while N kept her spider quite minimalistic, “s” decided that her spider would have really colorful feathery hair and lots of sparkly glitter glue, and it turned out so awesome!

both girls were quite proud of their silly spiders! this is such a non-messy, super-easy craft for kids from 2 years old and up. our spider will certainly be a cute addition to our annual halloween decor.

thank you for the playdate, “s” and thank you, momma karen, for this sweet idea!

N and i just enrolled in a local parent-child art class (is this redundant for us? perhaps, but we love to make art together.) the theme for today’s class was musical instruments. the art teacher had some fun ideas, so i wanted to share hers and one of ours, too.

N really enjoyed watercoloring on wooden castanets, so she can make plenty more noise at home. (watercolors on wood is one of my personal favs… check back near the holidays for more on this medium!)

painting castanets

let's flamenco!

we also made shakers out of household objects like paper plates and beans. just fold the plate in half, staple around 3/4 of it, and let your little one put dried beans inside. (we used pinto beans.) then your kiddo can decorate the shaker with any sort of paints, crayons, markers, glued objects you have around. (N opted to make painted dots and then play “connect the dots” with a crayon on hers.)

polka dotted pinto bean shaker

once we got home, N wanted to continue making musical instruments. she said she really wanted a drum. i noticed that our raisins were pretty low, so we turned a cardboard raisin box into a tissue paper mod podge drum…

thinking on my toes to find drum supplies

so we can still see paul newman through the tissue... oh well

maybe later this afternoon we’ll put on an artsy concert for daddy. if you don’t wanna make art, but you want to make music, melissa and doug always got your back:

somehow N acquired too many white shirts this season, and we’re big fans of color over here. i saw this cute and easy idea for tie-dying on make & takes, and decided to try it out with N. first we chose a white tank top that could use some color. we wet the shirt with water and wrung it out in the sink. then we put it on a plastic surface.

pre-dyed

N chose three colors of tissue paper that she wanted on the shirt, and we began to apply tissue paper to the front of the shirt. some people make designs out of the tissue paper, but N and i just applied it at random.

N applies the tissue paper by herself

after the dry tissue is applied, i used a squirt bottle full of water to wet the tissue very well. the tissue dye bleeds into the cotton shirt to stain it (it also stains hands – wear gloves!)

all wet

i then transferred the wet shirt onto a baking sheet that has edges. i used the advice on make & takes and kept the tissue on the shirt while pouring white vinegar over the entire thing. it looked like this:

pouring on the vinegar

then i put the whole tray and shirt outside in our shed to dry. it took a little over a day, but i live in a really humid place (for now…:) after i removed the tissue, the dye had transferred in a really cool way!

a now-colorful shirt

i put the shirt between two pieces of fabric and ironed it on high to set the dye. (you can also flip it in the dryer on hot.) i laundered the shirt and now it’s ready to wear!