Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Squeegee Painting

This process art activity was so much fun! For those of you new to reading my blog, I absolutely love process art - art which emphasizes the process of creating rather than the finished project. It allows kids to explore, make mistakes, and have an experience while they are creating. There is no prescribed product to make at the end,although we often turn our process art into various animals, shapes, or decorations, as we did with this one.

I saw the idea for squeegee painting here:  https://www.hellowonderful.co/post/SQUEEGEE-PAINT-EASTER-EGG-ART/#_a5y_p=6231668

With Easter right around the corner, I knew we had to try it out. (Yes I am weeks late getting this blog post done. That's life with a newborn!!)

Supplies: thick paint, white paper, roll of butcher paper (or something else you can put underneath the white paper in case there is a mess), a squeegee, painter's tape


To get started, I rolled out the butcher paper and taped it to the table. I used this to catch any mess we made with the squeegee. Normally, I have a thin plastic table cloth for when we do art, but I needed something perfectly flat for this. Then I taped the white paper down to the butcher paper using the painter's tape. 


I ended up having to add more tape to each corner of the white paper, so I would recommend taping the four corners and not the top and bottom like I did.

For our first attempt, Peanut and I squeezed drops of paint all over the page.



Then we took the squeegee and dragged it down the page, starting at the top and going all the way to the bottom in one swipe.


Although it looks pretty cool, it wasn't really what I had in mind, and it didn't look at all like what I had seen on the blog I found the idea on. For the next attempt, we put all the paint at the top of the page.


Then, the same as the first time, we dragged the squeegee from top of the page all the way to the bottom.


This turned out way better! We did all the rest of our pages this way.


I just loooove the way this looks. I have no idea why, but the paint didn't mix together at all on the paper (I assume because of the squeegee?) and it just created these perfect lines! We tried all different combinations of colours and patterns. Peanut (who is 3) is just ready for very basic ABAB patterns, and art is a great place to explore these.

We left the papers taped down as they dried. When we peeled off the tape, the paper immediately curled up, and I had read about this problem on a few blogs. I tried putting the finished art under some heavy books for a day or so, but it didn't seem to help. I read that some people iron their pages when this happens, but I try not to iron if I can avoid it. Let me know if it works though!

As I mentioned above, this sort of art, process art, is about playing and exploring with all the materials and what happens during creating time. So it would be perfectly fine to just hang these wonderful masterpieces on the wall. But, since it's Easter, I decided to cut them into eggs to decorate our house.

I printed off some Easter egg templates to use to trace... because I want it to be perfect. A normal person might just cut out an egg shape and that's okay. It's not me :)


I traced and cut out a whole bunch of eggs. I think they look amazing!! The stripes look so sharp and I think Peanut chose excellent Easter-y colours.


In addition to putting some of these beauties up on our wall, we shared them with Peanut's grandparents and aunts and uncles.

I will definitely be doing this squeegee art again. It's easy and looks so amazing!

Mar

Monday, April 16, 2018

Painting Ice

It seems that Mother Nature is a little bit confused right now... It's the middle of April and we're having an ice storm! It's a snow day, so Monkey couldn't go to school because the buses were cancelled. I didn't want to venture out to drop him off or pick him up with Boo still being so little, and it's a good thing, because the power went out at his school and I would have had to go pick him up right away anyway! All that to say, I had all three of my babies home with me today. Monkey is still into all things art related, and I think when he is around it helps Peanut get a little more interested in our activities.

We were all hanging out, possibly watching the Food Network, and we started hearing some crazy noises from outside. All the ice from the roof was sliding off and crashing into our backyard. It is crystal clear ice, and as soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for painting on! We've painted on ice before using watercolours on blocks of ice I made in the freezer, so this time I wanted to try our regular Crayola paints.

Supplies: paint, paint brushes, baking sheets, ice

If you are not unfortunate enough to have a freak ice storm in the middle of April, you could just freeze a baking tray of water for the same effect.


We got everything set up before I ventured outside to grab the ice. 


I grabbed my coat and boots and risked my life to get the boys some big chunks of ice. You may think that's an exaggeration.. it's not! The backyard was sheer ice. Luckily there were some big chunks of ice not too far from the door.



Once I was back inside the boys got to work right away!


Peanut started with orange, of course. It's his favourite colour and he was actually upset with me for putting all those other colours on the paint tray!


The ice was already starting to melt after only a few minutes, but I actually think it worked even better because it was melting. It made spreading the paint easier, and the way the paint mixed with the water turned out to be quite beautiful!



The way the colours ran together reminded me of watercolours (which makes sense because it is water and colour heehee).



Here are the finished products! I love the way they look. We enjoyed watching them melt, but I think the boys' favourite part was dumping them into the sink!



All in all, this activity ended up being a bit of a bright spot on this incredibly dreary day. I think it would be great on a hot summer day, too! 

Send spring thoughts our way!!

Mar