Crafting with the kiddos

Happy Moan-day everyone! This is our first Summer week without any scheduled activities. We had 6 straight weeks of Swim Lessons, and Noah did a 3 week Ocean Camp called Sea Cubs. Now, it's time to veg. Haha. I have to admit, "vegging" with my kids these days isn't exactly relaxing. The boy is 6 and the girl is 3 and they are non stop fighting, bickering, and bugging each other (& me). I decided to do an art project with them to keep them busy and keep myself sane. I pinned this pin the other day so I knew what our art day would be...painting. The pin involved finger painting and we were NOT going to do that. Remember, trying to stay sane. haha! Here's what we did...

1.put painters tape on canvas.

2. draw a shape with a sharpie on the tape (Noah chose a star).

3. Use an exacto knife to cut out the shape (Hayden chose a heart). I had flat board-style canvas for this which worked great. I think the exacto could have cut through a gallery wrapped canvas.

4. Start painting.

We painted outside so our mess would be...outside. lol. We did one color at a time letting it dry for 10 minutes between coats. Noah had fun setting the timer for 10 minutes. I worked on my own crafts and they rode bikes in the yard until it beeped.

(note: The next time we do this, I will only be putting out the colors that I want them to use. They have pretty interesting color combo taste). The peach was not in my original plan.

After all the paint was on, we set the timer for 20 minutes so it could get really dry. Being outside helped with quick dry time and craft paint typically dries fast.

We could have stopped there if we wanted to and just pulled off the tape, but we took it a step further. After it was completely dry, I taped off some stripes and let them fill it in with white (perhaps toning down the funky color scheme a bit).

After that was done, we peeled off the tape and let it dry. Then I let them each pick out a color to fill in their shape. I did this part because...well...precision isn't in the cards for them quite yet ;)

Here are their finished products:

Hayden:

Noah:

My kids absolutely love how they turned out and I think they're pretty cute too! Noah said we should send them to a museum (lol).

My second to last step was to add a D-hook using my glue gun.

Wanna see where they ended up??

Check!!!

Crafting with the kiddos was a great Summer activity and gave us a few much needed fight-free minutes {sigh}.

Happy Summer everyone :)