Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Art Activities

Cardboard Roll Stamping

By

I’ve been hoarding empty toilet paper rolls lately (yes, an embarrassing admission). So to avoid ending up on an episode of Hoarders and also to make my husband happy, I decided it was time to use up some of them.I had recently ran across the idea of toilet paper roll stamping on Tot School and decided to give it a go. I squished the rolls into shapes at one end and set out a few colors of tempura paint (I loosened the paint up a bit with water because it seemed a bit too thick for this project).

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

The girls were eager to get started, as you can probably tell by the hand hovering over the paint! My requests of “let Mommy take a quick picture” were just not heeded. Oh well, I let them go at it.

They started stamping and enjoyed the process immensely. Then AJ discovered that you could mix colors by dipping your roll in multiple colors of paint. Then Lizzie decided to get her fingers involved. Suddenly…

Yes, indeed, cardboard roll stamping evolved into handprint art! Look at those hands!

The girls used up many pieces of paper and all the paint I had set out. They had tons of fun and I’m proud of myself for just sitting back and letting them create (which is sometimes quite hard for me). Take a look at all of the finished products!

What have you been creating lately?

Window Art

By

Art doesn’t have to always be confined to paper or even clay. After bookmarking this wonderful post by You’ll Thank Me One Day and arming myself with the revolutionary idea that wet craft foam sticks to windows, I set the girls to work.They each had a bowl of water, a paint brush and a bowl of craft foam shapes. The original concept was to paint the back of the shapes, then stick them on the window.

Well, evidently that wasn’t a satisfactory way to do this. The girls immediately started painting the water directly on the window then sticking the pieces on. Well, that works too!

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

They stuck and stuck and stuck. They experimented a bit and learned that you can dip your shapes in water and they’ll stick to the window as well. That was a revolutionary idea for these two!

All in all, they loved this project.I know they’ll be asking to do it again and again and I’ll pull out the bowl of foam shapes again and again.

After all, what’s not to love. It’s relatively mess free (other than wiping up water from the floor) and it kept little feet from getting underneath me while cooking dinner (loved that bonus feature).

The next time you need to spark a little bit of creativity, remember, wet foam sticks to glass!

Cardboard Boxes

By

I’d like to present you with Exhibit A or one of the many reasons why we keep empty cardboard boxes around the house far longer than most people.This morning, it was turned into an impromptu art project.

After the girls dumped all of their crayons and colored pencils in the box, they decided to actually start using them. We discovered that colored pencils made a really cool sound when you colored really fast with them (and an even cooler sound when you used more than one pencil).

They also tried coloring in just about every angle possible.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

The top, the sides and the bottom all got colored. AJ did all her coloring while lying inside of the box.The masterpiece has been completed for the time being, although I’m sure it will be worked on throughout the day. Didn’t it turn out great?

Finger Painting

By

 

I had a revolution of sorts the other day. I was browsing education.com (a great go-to source) and discovered a recipe for homemade finger paint. Who knew? Well, I’m sure some of you did… but, I didn’t! It was cheap, easy and I had all the ingredients already in my pantry.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

 
 

I won’t reprint the recipe here, but you can go to this link to find it. All you need is cornstarch, water, salt, sugar and food coloring or powdered tempura. Lizzie was very fascinated by the mixing of the colors. I think next time we’ll experiment more with color mixing instead of just using primary colors.

 
 
 
This finger paint was also surprisingly easy to clean up, which is always a bonus. After making the paint, I just let the girls paint as they wished with it. I had to show AJ how to fingerpaint, but after that, I did not want to direct them. I love seeing what they can come up with on their own. The girls had a blast!
 
 

I love homemade art supplies! There’s no worrying about what may be in there and it’s a lot cheaper than buying them in the store. I’ll definitely be exploring more recipes and I’ll share the good ones with you. Oh, and we’ll be finger painting a lot more as well!If you enjoy this post, please consider following me on Facebook. Thanks for stopping by!