The Calming Art Effect

 

 Every once in a while, we have one of those crazy, harried mornings. You know the ones where your youngest decides 4am is the perfect rising time for the day, and once the other children get up, no one knows where anything is, or what they deem tolerable to eat for breakfast. Goodness, throw shoes, jackets, hats, gloves and snow pants into the mix and it's a full-blown morning nightmare.

 

These are the mornings that I decide the gym can wait. The to-do list can wait. In fact, any plans at accomplishing anything other than drinking a hot cup of coffee in peace can wait.

 

When we get home from dropping my oldest off at school, I set up the table easel and let my daughter go to town with a stack of paper in any way she chooses.

 

These mornings, more often than not, turn into the greatest days.

 

I truly believe allowing some creative outlet during high-stress moments offer the best calming effect around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While my older daughter creates, my youngest either snacks and watches, or joins in the fun with her crayon rocks. 

 

 

 

And this child waits for food to drop... eh hem...

 

 

The entire time, the children are engaged in creativity. I get to sit and enjoy a HOT cup of coffee - a commodity around here. But the greatest part, is that while creating, they open up and talk to me. Some of our best conversations have occurred before the sun rises, painting and drawing at the kitchen table on mornings like this.

DIY Classroom Valentine's

 

 

I try to take care of classroom Valentine's before February even rolls around. It just makes my life easier. My oldest child's birthday happens to be the day before, and things can get really hectic, really fast. I seem to have a habit of forgetting some of the day to day stuff when we get to that week too. So, for everyone's sanity, we plan ahead.

 

Right now, my son's current obsession favorite toy are these tiny little guys called Crazy Cubes. Naturally, when I asked him what type of Valentine he would like to hand out this year, he told me "A Crazy Cube one! That would be so awesome!"

 

Of course it would, except they don't make them.

 

When I told him that, he looked at me and said "well, couldn't we just make them ourselves?"

 

Of course we can!

 

The Valentine's were actually really easy to do, and you don't need special software to do it. I just scanned a drawing on to my computer and did the rest of the editing and type layout in Picasa and then placed them in Word to fit 6 to an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

 

Yes, fellow designers and image folks, I know that's not the best way to do it - but this way works just fine and anyone can do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First things first, you will want to decide on your theme. My Valentine included hand drawings, but if that's not an option for you, no worries, use a photo of your child (check out Pinterest for some really great creative ideas). If you are drawing, scan your finished image on to your computer. I re-sized my scanned image to 5x7.

 

Bring your image into Picasa and start editing. I like to edit in their Creative Kit option, if gives you more freedom. That's where I found the hand drawn hearts, and placed the cool font. This is also where I touched up any stray pencil marks.

 

Once you have your image finished, save it. Open word, change the page layout to landscape and insert your finished image. Adjust the size to your liking, copy and then paste as many as you can fit on a page.

 

 

 

 

Print them out, cut them up and you're done!

 

Happy Monday!

-Lisa :)

 

 

** This post is linked to Homemade Monday's link party, hosted by "Frugal by Choice, Cheap by Necessity AND New Nostalgia Anti-Procrastination Tuesday**

Painting Wet on Wet Part 2

About a week or so ago, I shared this photo of my first attempt at wet on wet watercolor painting. I wanted to experiment with it a bit before introducing it to my children. We all sat down the other night and gave it a go. The kids loved it! And I loved that while they were painting, they were creating little stories and characters out of the images that were being created. This is more abstract, and because the paper and paint are both very wet, it's near impossible to make "perfect" pictures, which can be great for the little artist who is not so sure of themselves. You could almost compare this to finding images in clouds.

What you need:
Watercolors (the kind in tubes that you mix with water)
Watercolor paper (this is a must because you wet the paper and it needs to be sturdy enough to still paint on)
Small cups (for paint dishes, and a water dish)
A sponge or dish towel
Paint brushes (bigger fanned brushes work best, but any will do)
Faucet
Plates (not paper - you'll see why in a moment)
Small towels for blotting brushes

I started with only two colors for each child so they wouldn't end up with a large brown smudgy picture.

To avoid major spills, or flying paint (you never know!), I only gave them each as much paint as I thought they would use up. The amount in the pictures was actually still too much, but we didn't encounter any huge issues, so it was okay. I also cut each water color paper sheet into fourths. My children are smaller, so I think that works better for them, and it also made each page small enough to fit on a ceramic plate for the painting process (again, avoiding a huge potential mess).

Instead of dunking the paper in a bin of water, I just ran it under the faucet, and made sure every part was wet. Then I very lightly sponged off the excess water, put it on a plate and handed it over to the kids.

My daughter took to it right away, and ended up having a mini-meltdown when we ran out of paper for her. My son took a few minutes to get comfortable with the idea that he couldn't create solid lines and "perfect" pictures, but once he got over that, he had a great time. Both are still incredibly proud of their work, and so am I... The photos below really don't do them much justice.

Have a great day!

-Lisa