Category: Painting

  • Embrace Your Inner Graffitist With This Sidewalk Paint Recipe

    Embrace Your Inner Graffitist With This Sidewalk Paint Recipe

    How would you like to just go to town and paint all over your sidewalks? Comin’ in hot with a sidewalk chalk paint recipe that will satisfy your need to deface public property in the most benign of ways. You can tell your kids you’ve mixed the paint up for them, but we all know…

  • Picasso Self-Portrait Project

    Picasso Self-Portrait Project

    This. Is Cubism at its finest. I haven’t done many projects based on historical artists, so maybe that is something I should focus on a little more with future projects. There’s something wonderful about kids focusing on a specific artist’s style and then replicating that feel/technique. Any time a kid can possibly absorb some history…

  • Toy Car Tire Painting

    Toy Car Tire Painting

    Months ago, we decided it would be a good idea to put some paint onto Christian’s car tire and roll over a big white piece of paper. It looked cool, but then I forgot all about it. After all, it’s probably not too child-friendly to back your car up when your kids are peering closely…

  • 5 Easy Art Projects: Spray Paint T-shirts

    5 Easy Art Projects: Spray Paint T-shirts

    Hey! It’s day 3 of easy art projects, and we are diving into spray-painted t-shirts. We actually spray painted a cami top, but this can pretty much be done on anything, including pants or your pillow case or the wall or the car! Yay! Now, not all of you will want to let your kids…

  • Let’s Make a Crayon Painting • Crayon Art Projects

    Let’s Make a Crayon Painting • Crayon Art Projects

    Okay, I’ve finally seen just enough crayon painting projects that I decided we had to try it. We’ve done our kid-friendly encaustics and wax spiral project, but now it was time to get all melty with crayons. I’ve seen some wonderful crayon painting rocks that people put in the oven, remove and draw on. In…

  • Back to School Crafts: Glue Batik Lunch Napkins

    Back to School Crafts: Glue Batik Lunch Napkins

    We have a yearly tradition of decorating cloth napkins for Fen to take to school in her lunch. The first year we tie dyed, last year was fabric markers, and this year we faux batiked. Batik is a beautiful technique of wax resist on fabric. You use a copper tool, called a tjanting, to pour…

  • Easy Art Projects: Puffy Cloud Paintings

    Easy Art Projects: Puffy Cloud Paintings

    Beckett came home from day care last week with the coolest white puffy substance on construction paper that I had ever seen. It was soft. We couldn’t stop touching it. When I asked Beckett what he had used to make it, he said “a cloud.” I went on a mad search around Pinterest, thinking it…

  • Cool Sprayed T-Shirt Project

    Cool Sprayed T-Shirt Project

    We’re big fans of making art on t-shirts, because, hey, wearable art! This is a fun, non-toxic way for kids to get a spray-paint effect and outfit themselves with a new t-shirt in anticipation of Spring. I was originally going to make this project using spray paint, and was so excited to find a product…

  • African Mask Project

    African Mask Project

    As a teenager, I had a brief obsession with African masks. I’ve always loved faces in art, and I suppose the graphic beauty of African masks appealed to me as a stylization of  regular faces. I couldn’t even believe my luck when my family visited the National Museum of African Art  in D.C. I was…

  • Famous Paintings Recreated Using Non-Traditional Art Materials

    Famous Paintings Recreated Using Non-Traditional Art Materials

    Copying master paintings is a traditional way for students to learn about making art. You are forced to look really closely at the piece you are copying in order to get all of the colors, shading, shapes, etc. correct. Established artists sometimes are inspired to try their hand at recreating works of art, sometimes using…

  • Mini Houses- Recycled Cardboard Art Project for Kids

    Mini Houses- Recycled Cardboard Art Project for Kids

      Raise your hands if you go through eight million cardboard boxes a week. We do. Between the cereal, Diet Coke and delicious coconut La Croix, we usually have an overflowing recycling bin by about the 3rd day after garbage pickup. And there are only so many times you can cut off a side and…

  • DIY Scratchboard Art Project

    DIY Scratchboard Art Project

    It’s totally easy to DIY scratchboard, so let’s get down to it.   Recipe: 1/4 cup black tempera paint 1/4 cup dish soap That’s it! Mix it up and paint it on some heavyweight paper, like watercolor paper. Let the first coat dry and then slather on the second coat. I really do mean slather,…