Edible paint and Balloon painting

Spring is definitely a time to explore creatively and to get your hands dirty. With that in mind, the focus this issue is on exploration and process rather than results. The results can be lovely but it’s really about having fun. Both these activities are great for toddler and older kids.

Edible Paint Car / Dino Wash

You’ll need: some things to paint that can easily be wiped off; little cars or figurines

                   several small plastic bowls, some small paint brushes, plain or vanilla yogurt, food colouring, spoon, small tub of warm water and towel

The recipe is simple: plain yogurt and a few drops of food colouring. Drop a bit of each color into separate bowls and encourage your child to paint the items. Leave the spoon out to let them experiment with color mixing. Kids always gravitate towards water and they love scrubbing the things off. Give them a small rag or an old toothbrush to scrub with. Note: you can also do this activity with shaving foam, just a bit of foam in each bowl and a few drops of food colouring. 

Balloon Painting

You’ll need: small balloons, heavier paper, some pie-tins or paper plates, some acrylic paint or the shaving foam paint in the above recipe

Blow up a few balloons in various sizes but small enough that they can be dipped in the paint easily. Set out a few plates with a fair-sized dollop of paint in the middle of each. If using acrylic, it can be nice to add some white to all the colors, as the effect becomes less muddy. Show your child how you can dip, roll, and even bounce your balloon on and across the paper to achieve different effects. Have fun!

Salt Dough ornaments

Salt Dough Ornaments

Children of the 7o’s: do you remember this? Salt dough is a simple dough made of equal parts cooking salt, white flour and half the amount of water. (a standard batch is 1 cup flour, I cup salt, 1/2 cup warm water). It will be a little grainy but its basically the recipe that many of our Mom’s used to make standard play dough. Here’s what you’ll need for the craft:

the salt dough mixture
rolling pin (or wine bottle :)
baking sheet
cookie cutters
straw (to punch a hole to thread through)
acrylic paint and some small brushes
variety of household stuff to emboss the dough with-buttons, lego, forks, toothpicks,leaves, lace,etc-anything that makes an interesting mark
ribbon or twine
On a lightly floured surface, roll out your dough to about a half-inch thickness , cut your shapes with the cookie cutters and punch a hole in the top. Sit together and try out all your tools, experimenting with what marks you like best. Pop them onto an ungreased baking sheet and bake them at 120 degrees for about an hour, turning them once. After they cool, decorate with paint or glitter or decorate with crayons while they are still warm to get vibrant results. String and hang.

Paper roll Reindeer
Save some toilet roll spindles to make this easy christmas craft. You’ll also need:
christmas wrapping paper
scissors
pipe cleaners
clear tape
construction paper in brown, white,red felts or crayons
mini pompoms and google eyes-you can make both with paper but Hema sells them and kids freaking love them-optional
white glue or glue stick
Start by trimming the wrapping paper to the size of the roll. Secure it with tape in the middle so it covers the roll. Then cut out a triangle proportionate to the size of the roll. Apply glue to the back and glue it on the top of the roll to make the head. Cut out paper ears and (white eyes with pupil drawn in and add them. Trim the pipe cleaner and old them to look like antlers and tape them on the back of the deer. Add a nose and any other festive details. Bits of ribbon can look nice on top. 

Sunny Lions and Ice Painting

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Sunny Lions

This craft can be a bit of effort to prepare, but it makes up for it in its its accessibility for toddlers to much older children. The trick is making a lot of textures available to create the mane, so they can customise their lion. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
-paper plate ,non-waxed

-red, yellow and black tempera or acrylic paint, a med size brush, some water
-glue stick and scissors
-construction paper in yellow, black, white (optional) and either green or blue
-an assortment of colourful papers-anything goes here; from old wallpaper samples to gold foil, raffia,...you get the idea-anything that we can use to make it interesting. Hema sells some great patterned scrapbook paper that will give you lots left over for other projects. Papers in the red- orange-gold range look best but the wilder the better.

First we will paint the plates and let them dry. Make a sunny yellow middle, ringed with orange and set aside. Next we will cut the papers. If your kid is big enough to use scissors, she’ll probably want to do this part on her own: but what we are making is a bunch-approximately 15 or so -pieces of colourful and patterned paper to make the mane. Cut the paper out in strips no wider than 2 inches or so, and not much longer than 5. Now for the nose, ears and eyes. Cut out two 3 inch paper squares in either green or blue for the eyes . Cut out an fat almond shape for the eyes, stacking the 2 papers to get eyes that are the same size and trim them to fit your plate and liking. Ditto for the ears. Cut out an extended triangle for the nose in any color you fancy-I had some nice old textured wallpaper lying around, but it can be anything. The bottom part of the nose we’ll fill in later. Now the fun part! Your plate is probably dry by now-flip it over and paint a generous ring of glue with your glue stick, in an arc on one half of the back of your plate (otherwise your sleeves’ll get gooey and the glue will dry out). The arc should be on the edge of the plate, about 2 inches wide for easy gluing. Encourage your artists use as many different kinds of papers as they can, and never to put two of the same kind together. For the littles it can take some repeated demonstrating about the back and the front-as they get excited and forget what they are gluing down will actually be facing the other way! Do the other side of the plate next so eventually you have a fringe the full way ’round. Flip it over and glue on your nose, eyes and ears. Using black paint (or a sharpie, if your artist is not yet so manually inclined), to make pupils for the eyes, and a cartoon-y “w” for the mouth and an upside down triangle to finish the nose. I cut out teeth for fun and many of the older students I’ve taught like to add raffia for whiskers.

Ice Painting

When your kids are little, the best thing you can do is astound them with the wide variety of tools there are to make marks. Ice painting is one of those ones that little kids get bright-eyed over. The materials are cheap and accessible and its the perfect activity for a warm day. You can make them ahead of time to save your skin when you need something to engage them for awhile, or do it all with them to teach them about color mixing. Note* Do try to use heavier weight paper, like manilla or card stock-it’ll save the work from sogging out too much. You’ll need :

Ice cube tray, 3 small plastic bowls or cups, plastic spoons, food colouring, paper, wooden craft (popsicle) sticks.

Start out by making with the 3 primary colors-red, blue and yellow- in small plastic bowls or cups. Start with about 6 or so drops of food coloring added 1/4 cup of water. Use more food coloring if you want the colors to be more intense. Mix well and test on blank paper till you get the intensity you want. Leave a spoon in each cup. Next get out your ice tray and start spooning the colors in. The primaries first, and then make the secondaries-orange, green and purple. Put the tray in the freezer for about 35 minutes and they are half slushy so you can add your popsicle sticks as handles. Pop them back into the freezer to harden completely. When you want want to use them,

take them out and let them stand and room temperature a bit,then loosen and ease them out. Give them some paper and let them go! 

Bleeding Tissue portraits and coffee centre flowers

Portrait in Bleeding tissue paper

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Bleeding tissue is actually crepe paper (the slightly frilly, lined stuff) that we will be using to paint our portrait. The dye from the tissue bleeds easily with the addition of water, creating some lovely painterly effects. 

What you will need:

Crepe paper (available at craft stores in rolls) cut into strips or squares no more than an inch or 2 big. its nice to get a selection of primary colors, a little will go a long way

scissors

cup of water

paintbrush and rag

black crayon or pastel

heavy white paper or card stock-2 pieces 

white glue or glue stick

gold goache or acrylic paint (optional)

Start by cutting one of the pieces of paper into an oval or circle. This paper will be the base for your portrait. For your portrait you can draw yourself or someone in your family, even a favourite pet.  Using only the crayon/pastel make your portrait and try to fill up the all space in the oval. Next take a color you like from the selection of tissue strips and lie it where you want to apply color. Take your brush and apply some water-not sopping wet but liberal-to the tissue. You’ll see the color bleed out immediately. This is the fun part- layering the colors to create new ones can teach kids about how to mix colors. You can remove the wet tissue now and paint with the dye underneath, or leave the tissue on for more vibrant effects.You can use the tissue to stamp and stain the paper wherever you wish. Let your portrait dry somewhat. Apply glue to the back and work quickly to place the oval in the center of your blank paper, tapping it down to affix it. Take the crayon and draw a frame around your portrait and cut it out. The last step is decorating the frame. Gold paint looks nice but you can also use tissue to paint this part, or any paint you wish.  These look great hanging on a parlour wall together.

Coffee centre Flowers

What you will need:

Abit of ground coffee 

white glue and either a paintbrush or popsicle stick

wax crayons or oil pastel

either watercolor/goache/acrylic paint or ecoline inks in primary colors * note: these inks available easily at craft stores are a great investment for little painters because they give very vibrant effects and its difficult to muddy the colors

cup of water, paintbrush, rag

heavier white paper 

scissors

any interesting odds and ends of paper you have in patterns or different colors

On a blank white paper, draw a vase of flowers with the all the colors of the crayons, use the full height and width of the paper. For at last 2 or 3 of the flowers, leave a large open circle in the middle-this you will later fill with glue and then coffee. Add paint to fill in the background and add color; the wax from the crayons will resist the paint. Let it dry. Apply glue to the centre of the flowers liberally and sprinkle the coffee grounds on, tapping it down. Wait a minute before shaking the excess off. To add texture, you can finish by adding bits of patterned or coloured paper to the petals or leaves.