To create children’s art lanterns, you can of course just paint straight onto the bag. The best effect will be obtained if you use a paint that allows light to pass through, such as watercolour, felt-pens or ink, but not tempera paint which will block the light. However for these bags I decided I wanted to create a frame effect, and also to use some existing artwork, so I cut a frame out of one side of the bag. I then trimmed the artwork to size and oiled it with some clear paraffin lamp oil to make it more translucent. I suspect this would make the bag rather more flammable, which makes it doubly important to protect the candle flame with a jar, and also to make sure that the lantern is not left unattended – something which is good practice in any case whenever an open flame is being used. The artwork was then taped to the inside of the bag, to cover the window. Even when not being used as lanterns, these make attractive gift bags in their own right.

I also created a lantern which is a variation of the Valentine card I wrote about a few weeks ago, by cutting a design out of one side of the bag, using a sharp scalpel and cutting board (placed inside the bag). I then taped a piece of the kids bubble painting artwork inside the bag, so that it could be seen through the cut-out design. When you place a candle inside it lights up the artwork behind, which can be seen glowing through the cut-out design on the front. Of course you could dispense with the children’s artwork altogether here if you like, and just put a piece of coloured paper, or even foil behind to reflect the light. In fact, this version actually looks quite good in the daytime, even without a candle, just stood in front of a window.

I was really pleased with the lanterns which look gorgeous grouped together, and would provide a wonderful form of outdoor lighting for summer evening entertaining.

This post was created for Tinkerlabs Paper Bag Challenge

Bubble Painting #1

The first technique is the one most people will be familiar with. Here, you mix your paint (in this case tempera) with a little water, and a squirt of washing-up liquid, stir it up and then blow into it with a straw to create lots and lots of bubbles. You then gently place the paper over the bubbles to take a print from them, remove, and allow to dry.

This is the basic technique, but you can vary it. For example, you can use a large tray of bubbles to cover the whole sheet. Alternativelyyou can use several small pots of different coloured bubbles, as in the example below, and print them one at a time on the same page, (or cluster them together and do them all at once) to create multi-colour bubble circles.  Another variation is to try layering one colour print with another using bubbles of a different colour.

Bubble Painting #2

The next technique is equally popular with children, but is potentially messier. It’s a great project for outdoors on a sunny day, but we did this indoors, and so I used a cardboard box to ‘contain’ the mess.

This time we used watercolour inks mixed with a squirt of bubble solution (we’ve acquired lots of pots of this from numerous different party bags). The bubbles were then blown through a ‘window’ in the cardboard box, onto a sheet of paper below. The ink I used can stain, and the thought of inky bubbles floating and popping around the house did not appeal! However the box limited the damage quite successfully.

We used watercolour paper to blow our bubbles onto, as I found this retained the image of the bubbles better when the paper got quite wet, instead of pooling and running. I like the combination of bubbles here with splatters and dribbles, and it was a really easy activity which the boys loved doing.

Bubble Painting #3

The 3rd technique we’ve tried involves painting with ‘foam’. Once again, this is a messy activity – possibly the messiest of the lot. This time you mix the tempera paint, as in the first technique, with a little water and a squirt of washing-up liquid. It’s important with all of these techniques to make sure you don’t dilute the paint too much if you want to get a strong print. I used old ice-cream tubs for the paint, and mixed up several different colours.

A sponge is used to apply the paint. I used a clean sponge for each colour, and squeezed it a few times in the paint first to get plenty of foam. The coloured foam is then applied to a sheet of toughened glass or perspex (or even an old tray) in whatever design you like, and then the paper placed over the top to take a print.

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When you remove the paper pull it back and forth (up and down) a little as you do it – this enhances the veining effect that you achieve, which looks very organic, rather like trees.

I have to say that I carried on with this activity for a whole morning, long after the boys had moved on to other things! With this technique particularly I love the combination of the bubbles and the veining, and the finished papers are so evocative that I feel sure we will be using them as the basis of further artwork. It’s rather like seeing pictures in the fire. I look at these and see underground caves, mysterious fantasy architecture, enchanted forests, and undersea scenes….

String gel is basically an acrylic painting medium that makes your paint more ‘stringy’ or stretchy, allowing you effectively to ‘draw’ directly with the paint by flicking and dribbling it about. As you can imagine, the amount of ‘control’ you have over your ‘drawing’ is limited, but simple shapes are achievable, and I rather like the dynamic spontaneous scribbles you get this way. All in all it’s lots of fun to use.  It is however rather expensive, so before I bought it, I experimented with achieving the same effect with PVA medium.  I found that this was successful in every instance except for the fact that for some reason it dulled the colour of the paint once it had dried. The gorgeously bright colours you got while the paint was still wet, were disappointing when dry, and this happened not only with tempera paint, but also with good quality acrylic too. With the proper gel though, this did not happen, and the colours remained bright and true.

For this canvas I drew the heart shape by using a stick to ‘dribble’ the paint onto the canvas, using several different colours.  We then sprinkled glitter onto the wet paint, and after it had dried, sprayed the canvas with some mounting spray and then sprinkled some more glitter on around the heart shape. The canvas has been painted so that I can hang it diagonally in a diamond shape, just for a change. The whole thing is wonderfully girly – the kind of thing I don’t get the chance to do a lot with the boys!

I also got some of the Pouring Medium mentioned in the video to experiment with at the same time, so I shall let you know how I got on with that soon!

I created a template to use for some  cards and bookmarks, which you can find in the Resources section of the blog.

• For the bookmarks you need to use a thin paper. The finished project will have 3 layers of paper, which gives it more stiffness.

• Cut the paper to a size that is double the finished width.  Fold this along the length, then unfold it and fold again along the width. Because the design is entirely symmetrical, you only need to transfer the top half of the traced design to the folded paper.

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• Cut the design with a sharp scalpel and cutting board, cutting through 2 layers at a time.

• Unfold the paper, and cut a section of your decorative paper a little smaller than the length, and just under half the width of the paper. Glue this in place, then apply glue to the other cut side of the paper, and fold the paper into place over the decorative paper.

For the card, because of it’s thickness, I cut the whole thing as a single layer. Of course you don’t have to use children’s artwork with this project, because it looks equally good using a plain coloured paper underneath.

There is one more Valentine inspired project to come next week!

The cards are created by taking tiny ripped up pieces of tissue paper, and scrunching them into miniature balls. The balls are then glued in place, either singly or packed tightly together to form a picture, depending upon what you’re creating. Added detail is provided with pen and ink. I thought the tiny scrunched up balls looked rather like peonies or rosebuds, which is what sparked the whole thing off.

A single rose, or a bunch of 12 red roses makes the simplest Valentine card. I like minimal!

This is of course a project that can be done with children, though you might want to use larger tissue paper balls. My 5 year old did his own tissue paper picture, working alongside me at the same time.You can probably tell he had no help or guidance with this – he wanted to do it his own way (as he usually does) and I was happy to let him. I haven’t a clue what it is, and he didn’t enlighten me, but he was very proud of it, and it now graces his bedroom wall.

You can check out my Valentine’s card from last year here

More Valentines projects coming up in the next couple of weeks.

If at all possible, these are best created using plain wooden pencils as a base, otherwise when you sharpen them, the original colour may peep through beneath. This may or may  not bother you, depending upon how much of a perfectionist you are. I just used some unused patterned pencils which I had to hand.

You will need:

Glue

Matt acrylic varnish

Brush for Varnish

Pencils

Decorative paper or artwork

Scissors

Ruler or measuring tape

Play dough or Plasticine

• Measure the length and circumference of your pencil and cut a strip from your artwork the same size, but allowing an extra millimetre or two as an overlap.

• Apply glue to the strip.

• Carefully apply the paper to the pencil at one long edge, and then roll the paper around the pencil carefully, maintaining tension on the paper as you roll. This is essential to get a smooth finish without bumps or wrinkles. Make sure that the overlapping edge is lying flat – you may need to press it down well with your fingers to achieve this, but the finished pencil will look so much better if you have a smooth finish. Using glue can be a little messy, so I tried using double sided tape instead, but found that this did not adhere nearly as well.

• Push the eraser ends of the pencil into the play dough or plasticine so that they stand upright, and using a soft brush, give them a coat of varnish. Leave to dry, then give a second coat. The varnish is essential not only to protect the artwork from handling, but also to ensure that the pencil can be sharpened properly without tearing the paper.

I created a co-ordinated set using artwork we already had, but you could use the same technique to create a set of pencils with specially created different handwritten messages or drawings on. They are great as a gift idea, either tied with a ribbon, or presented together in a box.

I don’t really go in for making new year’s resolutions, though some major de-cluttering will be on the agenda for this month, but I do find that at this time of year I naturally tend to take a step back and assess things. I’m an inveterate planner, and now both boys are at school I plan to use some of the extra time I have to finally make a few long overdue changes to Artful Adventures.

For instance, it’s the 1 st of the month, and there is no Mini-Masterpieces. I’ve been running it for a year now, and along with all the other changes I’m planning, it seems like a logical moment to move on and do something else. News of that to come in due course when I’ve found the software/plugin I need to allow me to do what I want, but in the meantime, suffice to say, that you will still have the opportunity to share your children’s artwork on Artful Adventures, since for me, that is a fundamental part of what this blog is about.

Although I began this blog ostensibly as a ‘business’ blog for Artful Kids, over time it has become much more than that for me. Because of that I want this blog to grow and change organically as my own creative life does, and not to artificially restrict it more than necessary. So, as my boys get older and become more self-reliant, and I have hopefully more time to work on my own projects, I have decided that I will share some of them here. So, yes, there will be some grown-up stuff occasionally, as well as that for children, and some which is suitable for both. Hopefully that will also make it a more interesting read for visitors who stop by.

I hope over the course of the next 12 months to make Artful Adventures a little more user friendly, and to provide more useful resources and features. I’m excited about the ideas I’ve got and the changes I hope to make, and hope that you my readers will approve of them too.

Here’s to a successful and happy 2012!

We decorated ours using glitter glue and sequins, but of course you can use anything you want. All 3 of us joined in, and its probably not too difficult to tell who did which tree. As you can see, my 5 year old has yet to appreciate that less is occasionally more, and decorated his tree with enthusiastic exuberance. My 7 year old decorated his in his own distinctive style, while mine was a little more restrained.

You can find the template here.

So wishing everyone a very happy Christmas, I’ll see you again in the New Year.

But if you want your gift to look really good, and even more personal, then giving some thought to how your sweet treats are packaged is well worth while. If the gift is for a relative especially, this is another of those occasions when I tend to reach for the stack of kids artwork to provide the materials I need.

This year I created some simple ‘cracker’ packaging for the truffles we made. It was really easy to do:

• Cut a kitchen roll tube in half, and wrap a few of the chocolates into a cylinder shaped package that will fit inside the tube, using coloured tissue paper.

• Take an A4 sheet of artwork, and trim the short edges with pinking shears to form a decorative edge.

• Wrap the sheet lengthwise around the half kitchen roll tube, so that it covers the tube with enough overlap to glue in place, and trim. Use glue or double-sided tape along the full width of the sheet of paper to hold it in place.

• Pinch in the paper at one end of the tube, and tie with ribbon to hold it.

• Add your package of chocolates, and then do the same at the other end.

Alternatively, and even simpler, you can create your own special packaging for a bar of shop-bought chocolate, either by replacing the whole wrapping, or simply replacing the outer paper sleeve.

Now I just have to stop myself from eating them before Christmas!

The robins and penguins were created from a single base thumbprint in black or brown, followed by a finger print on top in white or red. Details such as eyes were added with paint, and legs with pen. I used acrylic paint rather than ink pads to get a good dense colour.  It does mean that you don’t get the actual print detail of the finger, but if you’re using a coloured background you need something a bit more substantial.

I also did some reindeer and some Christmas sheep (I don’t care what anyone says, I think that sheep can be very Christmassy!) These also use 2 prints each from a thumb (body) and finger (head) with scarves and eyes added in paint, and legs etc. with pen.

This is of course also a really easy activity to do with children, and I hope to get the chance to do some more with the boys once they finish school for the holidays!

There is no end to the number of variations on a theme that you can do with this – why not check out the following ideas:

Snowmen

Christmas Trees

Christmas Lights

Thumbprint Christmas Ornaments

Santas

More reindeer

Snowy Owls

Moving away from Christmas ideas, if you want yet more inspiration for thumbprint art, Ed Emberley’s Complete Thumbprint Drawing Book is both comprehensive and inexpensive:

Or if you’re looking for a stocking filler gift idea, I think these little Finger Printing Art Sets available in a whole range of different subjects, (including animals, bugs, fairytales and dinosaurs) make an excellent small gift.

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