paint cut paste

this is a crazy-simple post. we love our watercolors around here like nothing else, and we may rival hallmark in the quantity of cards that are created under this roof. so here’s sweet little idea for some greeting cards for any occasion.

before N set out to create her abstract watercolor painting, we placed heart stickers on watercolor paper. (you can use any shape of sticker, of course.) then she enjoyed some time watching the colors ooze and blend together on the page. so relaxing.

we let the page dry completely.

after that, i tore the large sheet of watercolor paper into smaller sections against a metal edged ruler. i prefer this to cutting watercolor paper because it makes beautiful naturally rustic edges.

we peeled away the heart stickers (which came off easily) to reveal a white heart in the midst of rainbowy paint.

N chose colorful blank cards to glue the paintings to (i buy packs of them at michael’s when they offer discounts,) and she sent them out for father’s day and the end of the school year teacher cards in june.

easy and heARTful

about 11 years ago, for a few years, i was the proprietor of my own small business (on the side of my “real job”) making and selling natural bath products. once graduate school got underway, i had less time for the business aspect of it, so i dissolved my LLC. i’ve always retained the love of making my own natural products. it’s so fun now to pass this on to N! recently we created lipbalm – just in time for all of the puckering up people do on valentine’s day!

if we could have made it cake flavored, N probably would have been psyched, but we went with one of N’s second most favorite flavors for the lipbalm – peppermint. here’s my old recipe that we used.

ingredients:

• 1 tbsp beeswax (i like the small pearls – easier to measure)
• 5 tbsp sweet almond oil (due to nut allergies and because of its healing potential, i used coconut oil instead)
• 1 tbsp grapeseed or jojoba oil
• 20 drops of essential oil of choice (we used peppermint on this day, but other favorites of mine are cinnamon, lemon, lime, vanilla, ginger, tangerine… i like to mix them in fun ways. ginger-lime was the most popular lipbalm flavor i used to sell.)
• 1 tsp honey

instructions:

• melt together oil and beeswax in double boiler just until melted. remove from heat. add honey and essential oil. stir to blend. pour into lipbalm pots and let it stand to solidify.

although we LOVED making crayon hearts for her class last year, we decided that these would make awesome valentines for N’s preschool class this year. same group of kids = different gift. N picked out some heart stickers she wanted to put on the pots.

i added the following label to the back of her homemade valentine cards so that the parents would know the ingredients in the lipbalm incase of allergies or concerns.

we packaged the lipbalm and the valentine up in cute little bags we found at michael’s (intended for lollipops.)

happy valentine’s day! MWAH!

love is in the air! and at our house, hearts are EVERYWHERE! so we wanted to share… N has been having fun cutting her own hearts out of all sorts of paper.

the other day she decorated several of them using creamy crayons, glitter glue, and markers.

they’re on the fridge now, along with a cute one she cut out and glued to another piece of paper to make it into a “heart-person holding heart balloons.”

on one of our all-time favorite blogs, the artful parent, we saw the idea of cutting and watercoloring hearts out of coffee filters. just like we made coffee filter snowflakes earlier this winter, we did the same with hearts. coffee filters are awesome – not only are they easy for kids to cut, but watercolors bleed across them and blend beautifully when painted.

N spent an entire afternoon making TONS of watercolored hearts.

we hung some up on our backdoor so that the light could filter through the colors.

we mod podged some of these hearts to blank cards to make valentines for our family members.

some of our favorite heART activities from years past are:

• cutting paper hearts (age 3)
• watercolor doily hearts (age 3)
• crayon hearts (age 3)
• clay heart garland (age 3)
• stamping with heart cookie cutters (age 3)
• painting valentines for mom to cut (age 2)

happy upcoming heart day!  what are your favorite heART projects?

just a quick little entry to show one easy idea for homemade valentines…

all you need is a stamp pad, paper, a pen, and your own finger or thumb (well, your kid’s digits to be precise.) we saw this idea for fingerprint valentines on babble.com, and decided to try it. they used thumbs. N chose her pointer finger.

i wrote “happy valentine’s day” on each one, and N signed them all herself.

stay tuned to see the refreshing valentine treat N will be gifting with these cards…

have a sweet one!

at first, it seemed that the stars aligned for this activity… N just got a trio set of scissors for her birthday that she wants to learn to use and valentine’s day is approaching. thus, the obvious project emerges: cutting out hearts. a last ditch effort for a v-day seasonal craft and also one of the more simple and rewarding cutting exercises, right? (well, not in our case.)

while N napped, i gathered up some scrap papers that could pass as “valentiney”

i folded each sheet in half, drawing halves of various sized hearts on them with sharpie markers.

N asked to watch the valentine’s day episode of little bear when she awoke from her nap, where little bear cuts out hearts and gives them out to his friends as valentines. perfection, right?

after the episode, she was super-excited to make the valentines. so she tried. wholeheartedly.

now i don’t know if it is her age or if it is that these scissors work extremely well in play-doh but not on paper, but it just wasn’t happening for her. honestly, it didn’t happen for me with her scissors very well either. not with the straight-edged ones, the zig-zag ones, or the wave-edged ones. they sort of bent and shredded the paper.

we sort of gave up and i ended up cutting out heart shapes for her with my grown-up scissors so that she could give them to all of her toys as valentines, and she was psyched nonetheless.

project gone awry? yes, i post these sorts of outcomes, too. i mean the site is called paintCUTpaste and all. eh, better luck next year…

p.s. – can anyone recommend some awesome paper-cutting kid-safe scissors?

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!

one year ago, N and i made a bunch of cool valentines to send to all of our friends and family. it was super easy and very cute. thought i’d share this idea with you in time to get yours in the mailbox… (and take a stroll through memory lane with these old photos.)

first (a very tiny!) N had fun painting in reds and purples and pinks all over several sheets of heavy card stock.

then i cut them into heart shapes while she napped (scissors were outta the question. she was just turning 2 then.)

i glued them onto papers that would complement the paint in each one, and cut the backing into heart shapes, too. i wrote little messages on the back of each heart.

we displayed them in our house (awww, our old house) for a few days before stuffing envelopes to send love into the mailboxes and hearts of our friends and family far and wide.