Water Colour Pencils and Raindrops

Before

After

This is the perfect activity for yet another rainy afternoon. The technique is easy, colour in a page using water colour pencils, take it out and hold it in the rain until you've collected enough raindrops on your picture.

Super simple landscape painting

This is Miss 4's painting using the super simple tutorial from Creative Learning (found through here)

We did it together, but I actually liked hers better than mine.

There are just 3 simple steps:
1. Sponge on watered down blue (the tutorial said water colours but we used watery poster paints)
2. Use a playdough cutting wheel to paint on green stripes
3. Use a cotton tip to paint coloured flower dots on.

A lovely way to experiment with different ways of applying paint, and cute results.

Travel Cars Mat

These travel cars mats are something I made for a long haul flight a few years back. They were great on the plane; the little cars tucked securely inside when they were folded up, and they fitted easily on a little table or into a handbag. They were also great for other waiting times; at the doctors, at friends' houses etc. 

To make them I used some old curtains that had the white lining on the back. I hemmed them with bias binding, although the material doesn't fray, so hemming was just for looks. The bridges I made using fabric scraps sewed over some thin plastic (cut from whatever packaging rubbish we had in house). They're not super sturdy, but they do the job of getting the imaginations rumbling. 

I have a snap machine to put snaps on (which I bought way back when I was first pregnant and thought I'd be using in all my endless "free time" as a new mum making cloth nappies. Ha ha!). So I used snaps for the bridges, where I'm sure velcro would probably do the job. I put a couple of different configurations in, so that the bridges can be moved around.

The road I drew on with a permanent marker, and coloured in using water colour paints. I have seen some mums making beautifully sewn on roads. I like the quick and dirty option when available.

I finished with a loop of elastic sewn on at one edge, ready to keep it all together while it's travelling.

Home Made Personalised Fairy Book (with free story)

Over the last few days Miss 3 and I have been enjoying making our own book together. The story is one I made up on request about a week ago, and then refined as she requested it a few more times. It's nothing fancy, but it suits my little want-to-be fairy. In fact Miss 3 came up with the book title and main theme of the book herself.

Originally I had plans of writing it out and drawing the pictures myself and then letting her paint in water colours on the pictures. But Miss 3 really wanted to write her own name into the right spots, and draw the pictures herself, which made it a lovely shared project.

I'll share the words here in case anyone else would like to make it, but isn't too keen on inventing a story themselves.

I took 5 pieces of paper, and folded them all in half to make a book shape (with 10 pages). Keeping the pages folded together (but not stapling them yet, so painting would be easier), I wrote the text on the left page, and Miss 3 drew on the right page. I added some borders for fun, and after painting and drying, stapled the finished book together. As a last step I covered the book in plastic contact, just to make it last a little longer.

Here's the text, just replace the blanks with your own little fairy's name:

When ... Wanted To Fly 

Page 1

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called .... . More than anything in the world ... wanted to fly.

Page 2

Every day she put on her wings and jumped into the air as high as she could. But every day she would land *plof* back on the ground.

Page 3

One night, when all was dark and quiet, and everybody in the house was asleep, ... opened her eyes and saw a light shining beside her bed.

Page 4

When she looked closer she saw it wasn't just a light, it was a fairy!

"Hello!" said the fairy, "I'm your special wish fairy and I can grant you one wish for whatever you want."

Page 5

... didn't even have to think about it. She knew right away what she wanted most of all.

"I'd like to fly." she said.

Page 6

The fairy reached into her pocket and took out a handful of magic fairy flying dust. She sprinkled the dust all over ... from her nose to her toes.

 Page 7

Then the fairy took ...'s hand and together they flew out the window! They flew high up into the sky. Below her, ... could see all the tiny houses and the tiny streets with their tiny street lights.

Page 8

They flew around until it was very late. Then it was time to go home. They flew back to ...'s house, to ...'s room, and to ...'s bed.

Page 9

As ... lay in bed, the fairy tucked her in and gave her a tiny fairy kiss on the tip of her nose.

... fell asleep with a big smile on her face.

The End

Cornflour Salt Dough vs Cornflour Soda Dough

I wanted to try making cornstarch dough after seeing the beautiful mushroom and beads by 5 Orange Potatoes. Her recipe calls for equal parts cornstarch, baking powder and water, mixed with half as much salt. That seemed like a lot of baking powder to me, so I searched around and found another cornstarch dough recipe for 2 parts salt to 1 part cornstarch plus water.

I decided to try and make both.

I was feeling a little lazy and so I didn't look up if it should be baking powder or bi-carb soda. In retrospect it was probably bi-carb soda, but seeing as I had more baking powder on hand, I used that. In the same way I assumed cornstarch was equivalent to cornflour. 

Both recipes were dead easy to make. The kids adored that it was fresh, home made and they helped to make it. Even better that they could keep and paint their creations when they dried.

The recipe with the baking powder was an opaque white colour (and a little dry and crumbly, I think I'd try and improve that next time). The cornstarch and salt dough had a beautiful slightly translucent white colour to it. I had a tiny paper cut on my finger, and working with the salt dough was like (to use a phrase) rubbing salt into a wound. Not very pleasant. Miss 3 had no problems with it, but I worried about the fingers of Mr 4 who suffers from eczema quite badly. The recipe with baking powder was not a problem and nice to work with.

In the photo above, the pink mushroom and balls were made using the salt dough, and the dolls house kitchen accessories and smaller mushroom were made with the baking powder recipe.

Water Colours and Ink

I've seen finished pictures like this before, but never quite knew how it was done. But a special birthday present was needed and so I thought it was time to give it a go.

I bought a permanent marker with a 1mm tip for the drawing, although Miss 3 pressed so hard with it, I could have chosen one with an even finer tip. I used some good quality heavy paper, cut it to size, and drew the border on. Then I gave the kids instructions to draw inside the border, and then to paint every bit of white inside the border.

For the paint I used watered down water colours. I could have perhaps made them less watery and achieved brighter colours. It was important to teach the kids to wipe the excess water out of the brush. I did want the colours to run together a little, but not with whole puddles on the paper.

Initially I tried to keep it to just primary colours (used for the bottom picture) but Mr 4 badly wanted green for the top picture.

I asked Miss 3 to draw her picture in lead pencil first (to make sure it was an interesting picture from an adult's perspective, not just a big scribble), and I had planned on drawing over her lines with the pen myself. Of course, being a very independent crafter, she ended up doing the pen herself. So in retrospect it probably would have been better to skip the pencil step.

Mr 4 wasn't in an arty mood and took a bit of convincing to get going, so I didn't push the point when he decided to only paint over his drawing rather than everything inside the border. Instead I let that be his artistic choice.