Showing posts with label kids art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids art. Show all posts

11.6.20

Bubble wrap flower printing for kids

bubble wrap printing kids art easy printing

It's fun finding things at home to print with, and bubble wrap has to be one of our favourites. We've used it before, to print cow parsley and wisteria - this time it's forget-me-nots (though it really could be any purply-blue wildflower).

I wanted to do forget-me-nots because they remind me of home. They appear all over our garden, in unexpected places, and always brighten things up.

Forget-me-not, forget-me-not
I'd say that's quite unlikely
since you spread your seeds like common weeds,
at least you're not unsightly..

In fact you bring a zing of spring to any garden nook
which is good news as clouds of blues are everywhere I look!

To make the stamps, cut out a circle of dots (7 dots altogether) and make sure you don't snip or puncture any of them, and glue to the bottom of a cork, or on top of a bottle lid would work too. Use strong glue like UHU or a glue gun if you've got one.

We also made a stamp with four bubble wrap dots, for a bit of variety.

You can of course print on plain paper, but we thought we'd brush on a green wash (using watered down green poster paint and a big brush)

For the flowers we put a good squirt of blue, white and purple paint on a plate.



Mix some of the colours together, but leave some unmixed too. Encourage kids to experiment with all the different colours and shades - dipping into the mixed colour and then dunking into some white or blue. This has a lovely effect, giving the flowers much more life and depth.

Try not to overload the stamps with paint or you'll end up with lots of blobs with no definition at all. To help avoid over-enthusiastic splodges, get kids to try their flower stamp on some newspaper first, which acts like a kind of blotter, before printing on the paper.

You could brush paint on the stamps instead too, but that's not going to be as much fun!






For the stalks, use the side of a coffee stirrer or popsicle stick. We mixed some blue into the green to make it darker, and as before, dipped the side of the stick into the mixed colour, as well as the plain colours, plus a little white too, which helps give the stalks more definition, as if they're catching the light. Get some white on the stick and press it along the side of a printed green line.

This is a simple way of achieving a more advanced effect, and it looks great.




For the leaves, we used half a potato and drew and cut out a simple small leaf shape.





If you want to add yellow centres, dot on some yellow paint using the end of your coffee stirrer, or popsicle stick.




12.12.19

Father Christmas potato print


Really enjoyed potato printing at Halloween, so thought we'd make some festive ones!

And we've stuck to simple shapes again.

First, cut a potato in half and slice a thin sliver off the bottom, so it sits flat and is easier to work with.


Use a ruler and a sharp pencil to score a triangle - start with the base line of the triangle and take it right to the edges. Roughly mark the midpoint of the base line at the top of the potato, and score lines up to this mark.

You could draw the triangle on first with a pen if you want, and then score. 

Don't make your triangle too fat and wide.

Use some kitchen roll to remove little potato bits and moisture.





Score a line across your triangle, near the top, to define the hat, and then another one just below for the face. Use your thumb nails to pinch off a sliver of the face strip, either side, so it's not quite a wide as the hat brim.

Below the face, score an upside down triangle for the beard.


Cut away the sides of the triangle and your Santa is ready!




TIP: (To be done by an adult) Cut two wedges away, either side, at back, leaving a ridge of potato in the middle to hold onto. A sort of potato handle! Easier for little hands.



Brush pink paint on the thin face strip and red on the hat and body. Leave the beard clear.


When the paint is dry, use a black pen to draw on eyes and buttons.


Try some practice prints first, and when you're happy with the paint quantity, why not design your own Christmas paper or gift tags?

Add in a Christmas tree too if you want - another triangle, with a small square at the bottom. You could cut out a triangle and separate small square if you prefer.





4.1.19

Christmas card puzzle pictures!



Hang on to some of those old Christmas cards! So worth it for all kinds of craft projects. I've a box of old cards and use them throughout the year for various things - the more colourful and sparkly the better.
This project helps with scissors skills and puzzles, and ends up as a lovely, bright collage. Sort of three for the price of one!

You will need:
Cereal box card
Pencil
Scissors
Selection of old Christmas cards
Black pen
Glue stick
White paper or card

1. Draw some simple shapes on cereal box card. Make them a decent size - ours are about 15cm/20cm wide (6/8in.) With the symmetrical shapes like the heart and fish, fold the card in half and draw half the shape on the fold, then cut out and open up.


2. Use these shapes as templates (if you want to make more than one), and draw around them on another piece of cereal box card.

With a pencil, divide your chosen shape into sections. This is completely up to you, you could go for uniform pieces, like the one below, or completely random. You could have lots of sections too, but with little makers, it's best to keep the puzzle and the cutting simple. Our fish have six pieces, and it helps to number them.



3. Choose the cards you want to use. We arranged our cards roughly into colour tones - blues and greens, orange and reds, and pale colours.

Place one of your pieces on the part of the card you like (go for glitter!), and carefully draw around it (you will probably find using a black pen works best, as a lot of cards are too shiny for pencil. You could copy the shapes on the back instead, but we found this made it harder to get the part of the picture we wanted)




We divided our bird into 5 sections - with a wing shape in the middle.



4. Label the back of the card pieces with the corresponding numbers too, to keep track of the shapes you've cut out.

5. Muddle them up and get puzzling!


6. When you're ready to make your collage, use a glue stick to glue the pieces to some paper or card. Leaving a small gap between the pieces looks great (and is forgiving!).

7. Use a black pen to dot on eyes, or hole punch a dark coloured Christmas card and glue on eyes. We added little hole punched air bubbles for our fish, and you could add lots more to your collage, like extra Christmas card sealife and maybe some wavy, tissue paper seaweed?

We added an orange triangle beak to our bird and you could cut out some legs, or maybe a branch and some leaves from green coloured cards? What about a Christmas card nest!

Lots of possibilities - see where your imagination takes you.

I'm keeping the heart puzzle picture for next month..





This one has a few more pieces, and we added fins.