paint cut paste

when i saw this idea on playbased learning’s blog, i thought it would be a fun one for a warm afternoon outside at the easel.

novi and i mixed up some colored water in random spray bottles we found around the house. we just added about 8 drops of food coloring to the water.

we brought the easel out into the sun, and embarked on this charming little endeavor. as the blog (where i got the idea) said, it is a bit difficult for little fingers to work the pump squirters. the trigger squirter (our red paint was in) was a bit easier for novi to control.

novi wished the colors were brighter (next time, liquid watercolors might be in order.) we tried the paint on manilla paper, and it did show up brighter and made a rather cute little scene.

novi was still delighted with the paintings we made, saying “they look like lollipop trees!”

i think the large ones will make for good wrapping paper for all of those summer birthday parties coming up!

today my art teacher friend and her daughter (who is novi’s age) invited us over to their house for a paper marbling playdate (and some baby pool action to clean off afterwards, of course.) she had the shaving cream and paints, and we brought paper, smocks, and my trusty camera. the four of us got down to some seriously artsy business…

marbling effect

here’s how we did it: first, we sprayed a cookie sheet (any tray will do) with about an inch deep of shaving cream and the kids had fun smoothing it out with little hands. shaving cream makes for good clean fun!

"this smells like daddy!"

then we chose a few analogous colors (so the project wouldn’t turn brown or gray… which could also be okay if it did) of liquid watercolors and squirted them on. the kids had a lot of fun swirling the paint through the shaving cream with forks.

paint swirling

next, it was time to press some paper onto the tray. any paper will do. we found that drawing paper and fingerpainting paper worked really well. (a brown paper grocery bag produced an interestingly subtle, muted effect, but wasn’t our favorite.)

then, we lifted the paper off of the tray. being the eco-chic moms we are, we scraped the excess shaving cream off of the paper with cut up cereal boxes (any cardboard works) to reveal the stain of the swirled paint.

scraping off the excess

we kept adding paint and shaving cream to the same try to produce different color combos and effects. the paintings can become more muted because the colors mix more, but often the later paintings look more interesting.

the tray after much adding & mixing

eventually, we had accumulated a stack of flat marbles… or rather, really pretty marbled paper that can be used as a cool background image for a kid to draw on. it can also be used to make lovely greeting cards or wrapping paper. super fun and a colorful, tactile project for little ones! in art, it’s the process, not the product… but this is one of those activities where the product also happens to be uniquely beautiful every time. the watercolors washed out of their hands easily with soap and water… but a splash in the baby pool afterwards was a bonus!

our marbled papers