We bought a home at the end of August and many of our non-essentials (like wrapping paper!) are still packed in boxes. We are celebrating my sister, (aka Aunt Bear’s), birthday tomorrow and Liv and I threw together some fun wrapping paper this morning. I hadn’t planned on using the painting for wrapping paper, but the colors were so fun! After showing Liv how to add water to the paint and mix it up, I just let her loose to paint. When she was ready to move on to a new fresh page I added some geometric shapes to her painting and we let it dry. I couldn’t find any tape, so I ended up using binder clips! :) (Worked pretty well if you’re ever in a bind!)
I’ve always dreamed of doing a lot of different types of art & art projects with my kids. I was just as excited as Liv to paint together this morning!!
A few tips I’ve discovered for painting with kids (Liv is 2.5 years old).
-Use BIG pieces of paper! This helped us get Iess paint on the table.
-If your child isn’t interested wait a few months and try again. Liv wasn’t really into the paint set when I bought it for her 2nd birthday (again, I was super excited about painting with her, haha). She wasn’t feeling it and got frustrated with adding water to the paint, butttttt a few months later and she was super pumped when I pulled it out this morning!
-Use a bowl for the water and only put enough in to cover the bottom of the bowl: using a bowl helped us not knock it over (a cup was more dangerous)..and putting a TINY bit of water in also helped make the whole thing less dangerous! :)
-don’t let the activity go on for too long! After about 20-30min Liv started painting her shirt and face haha..at that point we decided to wrap it up and go back to crayons haha :)
***The Mattise print above is from the MOMA online archives (ahhh, it’s amazing!). It’s a exhibition brochure that I discovered while digging through all the incredible stuff they have archived. Insanely cool documents!