Monthly Archives: December 2011

Favorite Projects of 2011

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I hope plan to get back to regular posting after my big kids return to school in January, but meanwhile, I wanted to share some of my favorite projects from this past year. Looking through the posts reminds me of all the neat things we tried!

In January, we tried our first tape resist project, which led to many more experiments with resist, including scribble resist (scribbling is so much fun!). We also tried shadow drawings for the first time.

In February, my then-toddler got sticky hands with yarn art, and the following month, we tried to paint like Monet after digging into some art books.

April is National Poetry Month, so we made some paintings in response to a poem. In May, we had a ball with scratch foam printmaking, and we got outside to draw the irises once they bloomed.

1. shadow drawings 2. yarn art 3. Monet painting 4. poetry painting 5. scratch foam printing 6. iris study

In June, inspired by an Eric Carle book, we made peek-a-boo paintings, which were so much fun to plan, execute, and view. We also oohed and aahed as we colored on hot rocks with wax crayons.

Summer, finally! In July we played with sun print paper and began designing and decorating t-shirts in various ways. Two of my favorite methods used freezer paper stencils and scratch foam printing.

Heading into fall…I liked my daughter’s painted jar-o-lanterns and her color mixing adventures. And, of course, we celebrated the winter solstice with homemade lanterns.

1. peek-a-boo paintings 2. hot rocks 3. sun print paper 4. freezer paper t-shirts 5. scratch foam t-shirt 6. jar-o-lanterns 7. preschool color mixing

What an artful year we’ve had! I wish you a happy, creative, and inspiring 2012!

Tin Lanterns (Two Ways)

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We made these lanterns to celebrate winter solstice, but they’ll be welcome all through winter. We made one version appropriate for older kids, and one better suited to younger kids.

Tin Can Lanterns

Materials: Clean tin can (I used 28-oz tomato cans) with the lid taken off with the type of can opener that doesn’t leave sharp edges; water; hammer and nail

Age level: Elementary & up

Fill the can with water and freeze overnight, either in the freezer or outside. I left room at the top for the water to expand, but it expanded downward for some reason. (If you want your lantern to have handles, you need to be able to punch a hole up near the top, so you’ll need ice up there.)

When the water is frozen, gently tap out a design using a hammer and nail.

We did this in the living room, as you can see, just spreading out a towel and using some old cloth diapers to brace the cans. We made our holes in the ridges of the can, so it was easier to brace the nail. It only takes a gentle tap.

I told the boys to turn the can so that they were always banging the nail straight, not at an angle. They’re 7 and 10, and both of them were easily and safely able to do this. G “helped” me by holding my hammering hand, but I wanted her to be able to create her own lantern without help, so I took inspiration from these jar luminarias at Family Fun.

Aluminum Foil Jar Lanterns

Materials: Glass jar; aluminum foil cut to fit; nail, toothpick, pushpin, or similar (to make holes); foam, cork, cardboard, or similar (as backing while making holes); tape (I used double sided)

Age level: All ages, and suitable for preschoolers

I happened to have a roll of cork lying around the studio, so I spread it out on the table and lay the piece of foil on top of it. G used a nail to punch the holes because it made a slightly bigger opening than a toothpick. I showed her on a scrap of foil how to punch the hole up and down, and how dragging the nail (like you’re drawing with it) will tear the foil. Then she punched her holes.

When she was done, I wrapped the foil around the jar, tucking a little under the bottom and a little around the top edge. I used a piece of double-sided tape to secure the overlap on the side. G ended up making two lanterns, of random design.

Tin can lanterns: my snowflake and N's initial

I placed tea lights in our cans and jars for use indoors. If you want handles on the tin can lanterns, punch a hole on either side at the top and string with ribbon, twine, or the like. But you need to have ice behind while you’re tapping the nail; otherwise the can will dent. (Also, you might not want to use a candle if you’re carrying the lantern; perhaps one of those battery-operated tea lights?)

One of G's aluminum foil jar lanterns

Because my ice expanded downwards, the bottom of our cans were a little warped, but I just gave them a tap with my fist and they flattened enough to sit level on the table.

Our grouping of luminaria, reminding us the light will return

Happy Solstice! And now we turn, ever so slowly, towards the sun.

Children Making Gifts (With Links)

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I’m stepping out of the usual process-focused activities to give you a glimpse of what my children are making their loved ones for Christmas this year, and to share some links and ideas. Because my children vary in age, ability, and interest, their gifts do, too. Perhaps you will find something here your child would like to try.

First up, my three-year-old, who absolutely loves bookmarks. She likes to empty the bookshelf that holds chapter books, quietly spiriting them away one by one, each with a bookmark inside. If you try to reshelf them, she’ll exclaim, “I’m reading that!” She’s been known to “borrow” her brothers’ library books, too, claiming them as her own with a bookmark and sticking them in her bedside shelves. She thought giving people handmade bookmarks was a fabulous idea. Here is her painted, salted sheet of paper before cutting:

And here are some finished bookmarks.

I love this project because it is simple, yet with a beautiful and useful result.
She chose the ribbon color for each one, I looped it through, and she pulled it tight.

My seven-year-old realized he could sew recently, so I asked if he’d like to try making felt Christmas tree ornaments. He very much wanted to. I sewed on the embellishments, since that’s a smaller needle and thread (but he arranged them first), and he sewed and stuffed the trees. Here he is sewing:

No photos of the finished trees, in case any relatives are reading. They are something to treasure, though.

My oldest also wanted to make ornaments, making more paint-drip globes like we did last year (using this tutorial). Last year, we made them for the boys’ teachers; this year, he’s making them for aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Here are the original six dripping upside down.

But a funny thing happened…on four of them, the paint dripped right out without adhering to the glass. Weird, right? So I rinsed out the remaining bits of paint (not much) and swished some rubbing alcohol around inside, assuming there was something in there that was repelling the paint. When they were completely dry, we tried again, and this time the paint stayed put. Last year we had enough to make extra, and we have several hanging on our tree. They’re simple and lovely.

Some more links for you:

Last month we made recycled crayons for the youngest cousins, using fun candy mold shapes. Our how-to is here.

A couple of years ago we made these surprise snowballs for cousins—they were easy to make and hopefully fun to use! I included a rhyme with them: Wash your hands, wash them every day/and your “snowball” will slowly melt away./And when it’s melted more than a little/You’ll find a surprise tucked in the middle!

And recently, as a countdown calendar activity, we made bird seed “cookies” using these directions. I doubled the recipe and we were able to make two larger and two smaller cookies. The birds loved them–and we’ve enjoyed watching the birds love them! And you don’t need special cookie cutters (although those do look cute)–for one of our molds, I cut about two inches off the top of a 32-oz yogurt container. Be warned, though—the mixture is very sticky.

Rubber Cement as Masking Fluid

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(Note: The rubber cement bottle is full of warnings. It contains chemicals and latex. It smells bad and the fumes can be hazardous. It’s flammable. It can cause allergic reactions because of the latex. I decided I was comfortable using it with my three-year-old for a short amount of carefully supervised time in a controlled environment. You may decide differently based on your child’s age and temperament. Please use common sense, okay?)

Materials: Rubber cement, watercolor paper, liquid watercolors

Rubber cement can act as a frisket (masking fluid), protecting part of the paper from paint to create a resist effect. G and I tried it out first, but we’ll be sharing with the boys, too.

The bottle comes with a paint brush, so G wanted to paint with it.

I experimented as well, both by trying to paint an image with the brush on one small square, and by drizzling it onto another. I wasn’t ready to sacrifice a paintbrush to create fine, controlled lines, but I may do that with the older kids. When you’re done applying the rubber cement (and more on technique in a minute), you need to let it dry.

While we were waiting, G painted a picture with the watercolors on another sheet of paper.

When the rubber cement was dry, we painted over it with liquid watercolors. “Look!” exclaimed G.

You can see how it’s resisting the watercolor. G really spread her rubber cement thin and over a large area; this probably isn’t the way to go for a striking resist effect. I’d recommend drizzling or applying in a more blobby way (we’re so technical here!), because spreading it out makes the next part difficult.

When the paint is dry, you can rub off the rubber cement to reveal your resist. We had to work hard to get all of the rubber cement off of G’s painting!

G’s painting is the large one on the left. On the right are my two experiments–for the top one, I used the brush that came with the cement to try to paint a snowflake. It worked well enough, but the brush is big and smears the glue around. For the bottom one, I mostly drizzled (I used a wooden clay tool because it was handy). That’s my favorite–the glue drizzled thickly enough to get a strong contrast between white and color.

I’m thinking next time I might remove the brush entirely and offer something else, to encourage drizzling. Hmm, I wonder what would work best? Ideas?

Cut Paper Snowflakes

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Materials: Scissors, various papers

Yesterday’s countdown calendar activity was to make snowflakes, so when the boys got home from school, this is what they found.

A basket full of pre-folded paper, ready for cutting into snowflakes. I used a variety of paper–coffee filters (which we’ve used in the past), vellum, and magazine pages, inspired by Pinterest. Earlier in the day, G chose pages from magazines and I cut them and the vellum into squares, then folded everything. (You can see how I fold here; I like six-pointed snowflakes because that’s how nature does it!)

When the boys came home, we cut.

And cut.

The vellum was hardest to cut, and the magazine pages, the easiest. (You might want to keep that in mind if you’re cutting snowflakes with young ones!) While I thought the coffee filters would be easiest, because they’re so thin, they are, of course, tough, as they’re meant to be, and it wasn’t easy for G to get her scissors through the fibers. She mainly cut the magazine pages, and because she was doing it herself (as if there could be any other way?!), she made lots of six-sided shapes by cutting the tips off at angles. We like these snowflakes just as much as the others.

V, being the oldest, did the most experimenting with different types of cuts to see what sort of patterns would emerge. The fun lies in the cutting and unfolding!

This morning, G and I took down our autumn leaves and hung up our snowflakes. (It is a grey, wet day outside that window.)

The magazine page snowflakes are very pretty in their randomness.

This window has some of each–both white and natural coffee filters, vellum, and magazine pages:

I’ve promised to refill the basket with snowflake blanks whenever I have a some spare minutes.

Do you have a favorite material with which to make snowflakes?

Painted Collages (TinkerLab Magazine Challenge)

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Tinkerlab Creative ChallengeMaterials: Illustration board, old magazines, glue or paste, scissors (of course!), acrylic paint–the kind in tubes, not the liquid kind.

Once again, Rachelle at TinkerLab invited us to participate in a materials challenge, this time using magazines. So I brought it up with the kids, who are now 10, 7 1/2, and 3. Did they want to do something? Sure! So we brainstormed. Although there is a lot of making going on in our house, especially as Christmas approaches, my kids didn’t look at the magazines as raw material for some thing. I suspect this is because when we get together to do art projects, we are usually focusing on exploring and experimenting. It’s very much about the process.

So although my kids have used paper to make all sorts of items, from super hero rings to dice for homemade games (and since I always have to think really hard about making a cube out of something flat, this impresses me every time!), they viewed the magazine as canvas. The ideas they finally settled on, which we combined, were cutting and pasting the magazine, and painting right on the page.

We started, of course, by selecting and cutting. G’s cutting skills have really taken off lately, because she’s been happily working at cutting paper just about every day (her idea). As a result, she didn’t need my help at all while everyone was cutting. After gluing down the images and letting them dry, we moved onto painting.

Note the mug of coffee to the right; mama runs on caffeine!

V decided he wanted to paint his board first and then paste his images down, so he’s using tempera here.

The rest of us are using acrylic after having glued down the images and then brushing a layer of glue over the image, as well. We used Mod Podge paper with mixed results; I was hoping to get a good surface for applying paint, but I don’t know if we wouldn’t have been better off just using a glue stick.

N and I enjoyed mixing the acrylics (the basic set of primaries with black and white) to get new colors, and we used a variety of brush sizes. He’s getting detailed in that photo.

G decided to paste down one full magazine page, with one tiny image glued down on top of it. Then she began painting.

Eventually she covered the entire image. Then she lifted some off using a cotton swab.

Here are N and G’s finished pieces (whoops, I photographed G’s upside down):

And here is V’s, although the images and text aren’t pasted down yet. He also has plans to paint the other side and glue down even more images. I guess I should have left one piece of illustration board full size!

He really likes Legos!

Thanks again, Rachelle, for inviting us to play along. Here is the full list of participating bloggers; click on the links for some more projects featuring magazines!

Child Central Station , Teach Mama, The Imagination Tree,Childhood101, Teach Preschool, hands on as we grow, Artful Parent, Paint Cut Paste, A Mom With A Lesson Plan, Toddler Approved, Kiwi Crate, Art 4 Little Hands,  Red Ted Art, The Chocolate Muffin Tree,  Imagination Soup,Michelles Charm World, Messy Preschoolers, Tinker Lab, Mommy Labs, Putti Prapancha, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots

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