Fun and Affordable Holiday Art Ideas

I love to spray paint. Whether I’m working with children or adults, it’s exciting to watch people experience freedom and leave their inhibitions behind by spraying liquid paints onto paper. Let’s think about making Color Spray Murals for the winter holidays, it’s a spray paint process that creative, affordable and makes for great gifts and festive decorations.

At the NAEYC Conference in Atlanta last month, Peter and I made a video of “How to Make a Color Spray Mural.” Here’s a photo of the artwork I made in the video, I draped it outside my studio so you could see how nice it turned out when it dried. The paint I’m using is Colorations® Liquid Watercolor, which is super easy to use in spray bottles and is also 100% washable, always a plus.

Here the same artwork folded and used as a coffee table runner. (Notice my sweet dog Abbey on the sofa , awww). Color Spray Murals are a great way to dress up your home or classroom for the holidays and this one used just a third of a sheet of mural paper so it cost very little to make, including the paints.

Best of all, Color Spray Murals can make you feel over-the-top creative. To the adults and teachers I work with, I like to say “you will feel like an instant artist!” and this quick YouTube video will prove just how and why that is. Take a look!

The “fabric-like” paper I’ve used is called Cooperative Mural Art Paper, and it’s the key to success with Color Spray Murals. Notice the soft drape and spongy textured surface in this plain white one that’s ready to be painted. Cooperative Mural Art Paper is a actually a special 2-ply paper drop cloth that’s sold in some hardware stores, but it can be very hard to find. It’s available from Discount School Supply® for $8.99 and is an oversized 4’ x 10” sheet with plastic backing. One sheet will make 2-4 small murals or 20 individual works of art. I recommend this paper over any other surface to spray paint, and I’m certain you’ll agree.

Check out this Wrapping Paper station, using the same Color Spray Mural from the video. Gifts look so beautiful when wrapped with swatches of a Color Spray Mural, and imagine having 4 x 10 feet of brilliant colored paper that you made by hand. For truly affordable gift wrap this season, consider a few other bargains from our ribbons and trims such as my personal favorites: Satin Ribbon in eight colors for $11.99, or Printed Craft Tape in 10 colors for $15.99, or wonderfully soft Textured Craft Yarns in eight colors for $17.99. All are an affordable way to reflect CREATIVITY and personalize your holidays.

You can also cut Color Spray Murals into smaller pieces and make scrolls, using dowels or chopsticks on the top and bottom. These make wonderful holiday gifts. You can leave them as art only, or mount a child’s poem or message or drawing on top. These beautiful scrolls are unique and easy to make, and use about 50 cents worth of materials. 

Handmade gifts are such a personal way to show you care. I found some ideas on Etsy the other day that I wanted to share:

Handmade Work has Authenticity and Soul.
There is JOY in handmade.
Nothing’s better than having a little piece of someone’s passion.

If you’re working with young children, you may wonder where to start with making ideas like these. Sometime a fence or wall outside is the best place to start.  

Notice that the sprays of paint are not running down the paper, like they would be if you spray painted onto the usual white butcher paper. The children are spraying Colorations® Liquid Watercolor onto spongy, fabric-like Cooperative Mural Art Paper so the paint is staying on the mural and reflecting back a lot of color.  

 

Here’s a picture from a 3-year-old classroom where we created a collaborative mural outside on the playground. The children used ferns and large leaves as stencils and sprayed on top of them to make leaf shapes. The bright drizzles are Colorations® Gold and Silver Liquid Watercolor, which was dripped on top of the sprayed areas.

Because Cooperative Mural Art Paper (LWMAT) has a plastic backing, you can do these murals inside also. Just be sure to put newspaper under all the edges. You’ll find these and other tips in my Color Spray Lesson Plan from Smart Art Ideas Activity Book.

(click here for the lesson plan)

Here are some girlfriends who came over to play. I spray paint on the weekends for relaxation sometimes, and when my friends hear about it they often want to join me. It’s very therapeutic and is a great activity for people who think they’re “not artistic.”

In Conclusion:
After a lifetime of being passionate about art and experimenting with every art material imaginable, I think I like to make Color Spray Murals the best of all. Why? I love the sensory and physical freedom of spraying color. I love that I am forced to work quickly and spontaneously and not over-think anything. I know I don’t have to be afraid of the final outcome or “how it will look in the end” because the color and texture will carry it, no matter what I do. I can suspend judgment, trust the process, and allow the incredible combination of light and color and movement take form in front of me.

Have a wonderful holiday season and thank you for checking in.

Materials Used:
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor - set of 13 (13LW)Colorations® Gold and Silver Liquid Watercolor (MLWG and MLWS)Colorations® Washable Glitter Paint - set of 11 (GLPA)Cooperative Mural Art Paper (LWMAT)Smart Art Ideas Activity Book (SMARTART)
Satin Ribbon - 16 spools (SATIN)
Printed Craft Tape - 10 rolls (PRINTED)
Textured Craft Yarn - 8 skeins (TEXYARN)


* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

 

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

Gelatin Giggles for Summer Fun!

Outdoor art is great for summer when we can enjoy time outside in the light and sunshine. If you love COLOR and gem-like quality of the Gelatin Giggles pictured here, you will want to add this simple sensory activity to your summer plan. Because we are making memories here with our summer, right? And there’s nothing much more memorable than colored gelatin slipping through your fingers on a perfect summer day. 

These photos are from Sari Abram’s 3-year-old classroom at Pressman Academy in LA where I recently a led a 30 minute Gelatin Giggles activity on a corner of the playground. I took in eight blocks of gelatin, plastic eyedroppers, five bottles of Colorations® Liquid Watercolor, and an art tray with a 1” lip to contain the mess. I volunteered for this because I’m developing a new workshop called “Messy Art with 2’s and 3’s.” I had already tried Gelatin Giggles with school-age children, but I wanted to see how very young children would respond. I learned that the best way to introduce Gelatin Giggles to a group of toddlers was to have them take turns two at a time, while I managed some semblance of control over the paint. As a firm believer in messy art, I also recognize there’s ultimately an “art” to controlling the mess while allowing children the experience of freedom with the materials.

Things were pretty clean and tidy as the first two children began playing with the eyedroppers on the white art tray. I instructed them to fill their eyedropper with the color of their choice, then stick the eyedropper into the gelatin chunk and squirt the paint inside. They learned that if they didn’t stick their eyedropper in very far, some of the color would splash back out on them, surprise!

They also learned that their eyedropper would sometimes suck up the gelatin and create a colored gelatin snake, surprise!

Before they finished their turn at the sensory table, I offered the opportunity to select a second color and inject that into the gelatin. Then they could watch the colors blend and pick up a chunk of gelatin in their hands and hold it up to the sunlight. We didn’t clean up between children, so the colors and gelatin chunks accumulated on the tray as the activity progressed.

To create Gelatin Giggles, purchase unflavored gelatin (Knox makes one and others are generally sold next to the flavored gelatins at the grocery store). Use less water than called for to make your "giggles" a bit more solid than usual. Here’s the recipe:

Knox Gelatin Mold: The ratio is 3/4 cup water to 1 packet of Knox. Take the number of cups of water your container holds and DIVIDE by .75 This is how many packets of Knox you need. In a saucepan, heat the water over low heat, add the packets of gelatin. After it dissolves pour it into your container. Let set over night. **BE SURE TO USE OIL OR SPRAY YOUR CONTAINER WITH PAM FIRST! Wait for a sunny day and unmold your gelatin onto art trays or a sand and water table.

Did I talk enough about the exciting presence of light and color? Check out how this glob of green sparkles in the sun! Does it make you think of stained glass windows or a sparkling crystal? If you own a diamond ring or anything cut from crystal, bring that to class and show children how these minerals are faceted, which means they have flat planes that refract color and light. Amazingly, clear gelatin also breaks along facets in similar fashion, which is why Gelatin Giggles look like gemstones in the light.

There's nothing like group art experiences to bring children together and create a sense of collaboration in the summer. Gelatin Giggles is a perfect way to introduce sensory art while the weather is warm enough for outdoor play and the sun can provide a brilliant light source to enhance experiments with light and color.

If you like this art idea, you’ll probably also enjoy “Ice Tunnels” and “Sand Tray Gemstones”, two of 18 Colorations® Liquid Watercolor Activities in my book Smart Art Ideas 2. Thanks for checking in, and I look forward to reading your comments. If you would like to have your own art ideas included in a future post please send me an email at areyner@discountschoolsupply.com. Together we can continue to build a strong art and creativity community.

Materials Used:
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor
SuperSafe Plastic Droppers (12SSD)
Brawny Large Art Tray (RECTRAY)
Smart Art Ideas 2 (MOREART)

From grocery store: Knox or other brand clear gelatin

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

The Messy Art Studio

What I love best about blogging is how we stay connected and share new ways to have fun with art. It’s so refreshing to know there are other “like minded” spirits out there. I always have fun with messy art, especially the kind of OUTRAGEOUS fun you see in this photo, sent to me by a fellow arts educator, Donna Bernstein.

Donna owns The Messy Artist, an art studio for children in New Jersey. She recently sent me a blog comment, so I looked up her website and I found it over-the-top inspirational. Just the name of her art business was enough to make me smile. Donna enrolls over 150 students a month in her afterschool art classes and delivers 15 Messy Art Birthday Parties a month. What a creative and successful entrepreneur! She must have boundless energy and a very happy staff. Imagine all those happy children and families, being exposed on a regular basis to the pleasures and values of sensory play.

To promote the VALUE of messy art, Donna highlights these words on her website:
Exciting, exploratory, creative, imaginative, fabulous, just plain fun.

Kudos to you, Donna, that pretty much sums it up. The ideas and the photos from The Messy Artist studio were so much fun, I knew you would enjoy seeing them too.

Check out these two boys messing around with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ on top of shaving cream. Donna was excited to tell me that she buys all her art supplies from Discount School Supply® and first learned a lot of her messy art ideas from our catalog. Everything here is written up as a Lesson Plan in Smart Art Ideas Activity Book and Smart Art Ideas 2.

This larger photo shows the group process at a Messy Art Birthday Party. Donna says when older siblings come to a birthday party, they sometimes have even more fun with the sensory play than the little ones! She went on to share her ideas about art in society: “In today's society where children are so structured and pushed to grow up it's great to see them just being kids and playing with goop, slime or finger paint.”

Here’s some orange colored Sensational Spaghetti in a large sensory tub, one of the Messy Artist’s signature projects. You’ll find the lesson plan in Smart Art, but here’s a copy (click here for the pdf) of it for you to see and print out.

Now check out this Sensory Box that Donna keeps filled with colored rice; it’s like a sandbox but for indoor use. Donna pre-colors rice with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ and keeps her sensory box filled with it. It’s the hit of her studio! Donna found that outdoor sand boxes typically don't have a strong bottom or cover, so she had her husband make this to her specifications. It’s 4' x 4' with a bench all around for kids to sit on. It's also big enough for kids to sit inside. It can accommodate about six kids inside and 8-10 if they are sitting around it.


The full-on body contact with colored rice and the sensations of this total body immersion are unforgettable. In fact, Donna says as children grow up, leave home and come back to visit her studio, they always first ask if she still has the colored rice to sit in!

Donna’s photos inspired me to make colored rice and spaghetti at my next conference, so I opened up my sensory collage box. There I discovered some colored rice I had forgotten about, I made it over two years ago! That’s some pretty good “shelf life.” I kept it because I loved this color combination, I even called it “mardi gras” rice. I colored it with lime, black, red, violet and magenta Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™. I always color some rice with black Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ because black gives such good contrast against the bright colors. And for the same reason, I throw in a little plain white.

To make this multi-colored, “mardi gras” rice, simply take dry rice and place it in different plastic zip lock bags, and make up each color separately. Pour, drizzle or spray Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ into the bag, shake it up, then pour it all out on a paper plate to dry. When the rice colors are dry, mix them together like the mardi gras mix, then keep other colors pure for use in various types of collage.

Getting back to the colored spaghetti: The night before my conference I cooked up 3 boxes of differently shaped pasta, and stored them in large zip lock bags. Here you see them in my favorite sensory tub heading for their travels. If you don’t have good sensory tubs, try these! They are wonderful. I use mine constantly and they last for years.

Here we are at the San Diego Association of Family Child Care, where I just delivered a Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ workshop. The crowd was mesmerized! But of course they were, how often does a speaker bring out 3 pounds of pasta and begin coloring it?

I showed everyone how to place rice or pasta into a zip lock bag, add Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™, shake it up to distribute the color, then pour it out. We poured the rice out onto paper plates, but we poured the wet pasta into the sensory bins. Here we have a bag of wet rigatoni colored with magenta, followed by other wet pasta shapes colored with lime. Are we crazy? Perhaps, but it sure was fun!

By the way, one final note about coloring foods. If you work in a low income area, it’s not a good idea to use food as an art material for obvious reasons. In that case, try substituting ice cream salt, plain wooden beads, or shaving cream, they work just fine!

Contact Donna or check out her website at:
Donna Bernstein
Owner and Director
The Messy Artist, LLC
www.TheMessyArtist.com
973.378.2425

Materials Used:
Sand and Water Activity Tubs (TUBS)
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ - set of 13 classic colors (13LW)
Smart Art Ideas - both books (ARTY) Paint'M Beads (PAINTM)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

I Love, Love, Love COLOR!

It’s officially Spring so let’s celebrate COLOR! 

I think color is the most fun part of art.  Do you adore brilliant colors, too? 

How about these huge coffee filters painted with Colorations®Liquid Watercolor™? Aren’t the colors inviting? 

There’s nothing like Liquid Watercolor™ to bring colors to life.     

The pigments are amazingly intense, and they are so easy to drip, spray or dab on with a “bingo bottle.”  Plus they are washable, affordable, and just about the most versatile paint on the planet.

Here’s a photo of a recent conference where we painted Texas-sized coffee filters with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ and sprinkled them with salt to create Salt Crystal Coffee Filters. What’s not to LOVE about this easy and playful art idea? 

Get your Salt Crystal Coffee Filter Lesson Plan here!

Young children can safely explore color using Colorations®Liquid Watercolor™.  This 4-year-old girl is exploring magenta.  She’s lucky enough to be in Francine Farkas’s class, where they do open ended art every day!  Here are two more of Francine’s students, dripping Liquid Watercolor™ onto White Canvas Backpacks (BACKPACK) using special eyedroppers called Super Safe Plastic Droppers (12SSD).  Notice how engaged they are in the painting process. Their sheer concentration speaks to the value of child-centered, self-directed art.  Experienced teachers know how important it is to provide paint and other unstructured, fluid art materials daily.  Wet or fluid art materials like these provide exciting physical contacts that motivate exploration and provide children with an almost magical sense of discovery.

Here are some Liquid Watercolor™ paintings on Real Watercolor Paper (PMONET) with salt sprinkled on while the paint is still wet.  The same paint is also applied to a long piece of paper towel.  Can you see the textures created by the salt?  Always apply salt to WET Liquid Watercolor™ and as it dries, the crystal patterns (little dots and textures) will appear.

By the way, sometimes I put Nancy™ Paint Bottle Classic Tips (NANCLS) on top of my bottles.  They fit perfectly and make it easier to control the pour. 

This last Coffee Filter Art came from a workshop participant at the recent CAEYC conference. Can you believe this beautiful Mountain Sunset and Abstract Portrait were both made with Texas-sized coffee filters painted with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ then cut up into these wonderful collages?  My jaw dropped when I saw these photographs!  They are so sophisticated, I am still completely in awe of the creativity it took to make them.  Imagine these materials are exactly the same ones used in other coffee filter applications shown in this post.  They were made by Bonnie Reid, an early childhood educator who simply asked me to tell you “I love liquid watercolor!”  Thank you, Bonnie, you’re  awesome.  I am so inspired by you!

I recently read a quote by Jonathan Adler who said “I love, love, love color – it’s the ultimate anti-depressant.”  I think I have to agree. 

I hope your Spring is off to a colorful start!  Thanks for reading this post, and please come back again soon.

Materials Referenced:

Liquid Watercolor™ Texas Snowflakes (BIGTEX)
Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ (LW18)
Colorations® Ultimate Liquid Watercolor™ Paint Kit (LWKIT3)
Super Safe Plastic Droppers (12SSD)
White Canvas Backpacks (BACKPACK)
Smart Art Ideas Activity Book (SMARTART)
Nancy™ Bottle Classic Tips (NANCLS)
Real Watercolor Paper (PMONET)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education

Enchantment Boxes

I've been testing out art ideas for my CAEYC workshop next week, and have fallen in love with our new Mini Geometric Papier-Mache Boxes (GEOBOX). At first I was shocked at how small they were, but then I realized small can be an asset (think tooth fairy box, ring box, and the old saying “big things come in small packages”). Aren’t they fun? They combine perfectly with Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ and Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty (WPUTTY), but you could color or paint them any way you want. The white papier-mache surface is so tactile, it will accept just about any paint or collage material. I recommend my test version of this project for children 5 and up, and the simpler seashell versions for preschoolers. Both are lovely, creative, inexpensive, and make a great gift.

In addition to playing with the mini boxes myself, I sent some to my CAEYC co-presenter, Danielle Monroy who owns Creative Care for Children in Santa Barbara. She tested them with her preschool children who had a great time with them as well. Danielle also used Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ but her preschoolers painted it on with a brush (whereas I sprayed on the Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™). Both painting and spraying work nicely, but painting is easier for the very young. Danielle’s children collected their own sea shells and glued them on top. (They have the good fortune of living near the ocean, but you could collect colorful pebbles, small pinecones, or other tiny objects from your own natural environment). I loved her sea shell idea, so I ordered small sea shells and used them my boxes too. You could also finish off with rhinestones for a little “bling.”

  

Here’s a photo of what I used for the school age version of the “Enchantment Boxes.” The Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty gives them so much interest and dimension. If you haven’t yet tried Air-Dry Putty, I cannot recommend this unique material highly enough. Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty is similar to Crayola® Model Magic® Modeling Clay (BMM), but more affordable. Both materials give children a wonderful tactile experience and offer a 3-dimensional art experience that’s very different from play dough or clay. It’s great for coiling and making texture impressions. You can use it with clay tools, kitchen tools, stamps or stamping sticks, and rubbing plates. It’s stretchy and so lightweight that feels like a magical marshmallow, but it doesn’t stick to your hands. Children do love it, and you can keep the price down by giving them a small amount (about the size of a ping pong ball per child) and having them use it as a 3-D relief material on top of papierpmache, wood, or other 3-D objects like picture frames or masks.

To begin with the Colorations® Lightweight Air-Dry Putty, give each child about the size of a small ping-pong ball as pictured here. Have the children experience the texture, pull it and play with it to explore its elasticity, then ask them to practice coiling it into little “snakes” and wrapping their coils into a circle. It sticks to itself so the coil will create a little snail shape easily. This practice and experimentation gives children the ability to discover things on their own, and also provides the structure for how to create a small 3-D shape that they will be able to glue down onto the top of their box before painting it. The flower imprint shown here illustrates a stamping stick impression. Colorations® Easy-Grip Super Stamping Sticks (STICKS) are the perfect size for imprinting Air-Dry Putty for these mini boxes. 

Before painting, be sure to glue your finished air-dry putty design on top of your box using simple white glue. You do not have to wait for the glue to dry to begin painting. I used Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ in our small spray bottles, (again, best for children 5 and up). Practice with the spray bottles yourself first and teach your children how to spray from a distance (8 to 12 inches away from the project) to achieve a light “splatter paint” effect. Use a few different colors and spray from different angles to create secondary colors. 

Here’s a visual review of the coiling technique, the amount of Air-Dry Putty to give each child, a fork used for texture and the result of a stamping stick impression. The close-up shows you how beautiful small sea shells are when glued on top at the very end. 

These enchanting little boxes make a great gift and they cost just 50 cents a piece. Don’t forget to plan ahead for Mother’s Day or any other special occasion on your horizon. Thanks for reading this new post. Please share it with friends and colleagues so we can keep the creative ideas flowing between us. I hope you’ll do something creative today, and remember that creativity exists more in the searching than the finding.

Materials Used:

Mini Geometric Papier-Mache Boxes (GEOBOX)

Colorations® Liquid Watercolor™ (BIGLWS)

Colorations® Super Lightweight Air-Dry Putty in White (WPUTTY)

(or) Crayola® Model Magic® Modeling Clay (BMM)

Colorations® Easy-Grip Super Stamping Sticks (STICKS)

Small Sea Shells (SMSS)

Spray Bottles (SPRAYS)

Colorations® Tacky Glue (GLUEIT)

* Brought to you by Discount School Supply®

* For more ideas, visit Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education