Wall art with kids: Butterfly footprint paintings

Needed:

• Canvas
• Acrylic paint (I used mixtures of ultramarine blue, cadmium red, cadmium yellow medium or light, white, with a small amount of brown) and paintbrushes
• Wet wipes

I've made three of these paintings so far with two butterflies, three butterflies, and nine butterflies, and with children ranging in age from one year to eleven years. Here are some tips to make it easier:

1. Paint canvas background color (I used ultramarine blue) the night before. If needed can do a couple coats.

2. Mark ahead of time where you want footprints to go.

3. Don't try to do all the footprints at once unless you have other adults to help.

4. Wipe child's feet with wet wipes first, before applying the paint. Do one foot, wipe clean, then the second foot, and wipe clean.

5. Toddlers and babies are easiest to do if you have a second adult to hold them while you put the paint on their feet, then the two of you can lower and press each foot straight down and straight up from the canvas. Then immediately can wipe feet clean with the wipes before the paint spreads elsewhere. If making the painting on your own with kids, strap baby/toddler into high chair with a snack while you paint their feet, and then hold the canvas upright to push the foot into it. The first method works better if possible.

6. Kids who are preschool/early elementary age are easier to do - have them sit on a chair, wipe their feet, apply paint one foot at a time. They can stand, leaning against you for balance, while you press their foot straight down and up from the canvas (canvas is on floor, with tarp/plastic underneath). I usually have put the foot over my shoulder to have the greatest control over getting it where I want it to go.

7. Some footprints turn out better than others - can always paint over them with the background color and then do them again another time, or can fix them as needed with paint and paintbrush.

Painting used glass (fun for grown-ups and kids)

I don't know whether it's all the glass honey jars I've been cleaning and recycling lately, or if it's because I realized I could buy a little set of glass paints at the craft store for only £2, but I recently became obsessed with the idea of painting some of our old glass items to reuse for other functions around the house.

A trip to the craft store put me out only about £10 (for two sets of the paint pots as well as gold and dark blue glass-paint markers). I'd saved myself a wine bottle and three glass honey jars on which to experiment and looked around Pinterest for some glass-painting ideas. I'd also set aside three glass salad dressing bottles on which my four-year-old could attempt his own glass-painting experiments. In the afternoons, we've been sitting down with the paints and markers to see what we could do.


DECORATIVE WINE BOTTLE
On the wine bottle, I used the gold marker to draw a series of squares and rectangles (and to color in some segments as well). After the marker dried, I painted the rectangles various colors (it took a few coats of paint since I wanted the colors darker). After the paints dried, I went back over the gold lines and gold-colored rectangles again to finish off the stained-glass look.













FUN FOR KIDS
Meanwhile, painting from his side of the table, my four-year-old continuously declared glass painting to be the most fun thing he'd ever done. He's not always into painting, but I think the novelty of it as well as me joining him with my own glass-painting projects really excited him. His finished products could be used as fun vases--although he has preferred instead to use them as homes for a small plastic green alien.






TOOTHBRUSH/TOOTHPASTE HOLDERS
For my final project, I used the honey pots to make containers for all of the toothbrushes and toothpastes often scattered on top of the bathroom shelf. To help make sure that the look of two of them would be consistent with each other, I first drew what I wanted on a piece of paper, then put the paper inside the jar, so I could trace it onto the glass and ensure relative conformity. On the third honey pot, I tried out a random flower design before lightly painting the whole jar blue.




























While I've satiated the glass-painting urge for now, there are so many more fun experiments that my son or I could have tried. The paints could work as well for an even simpler project, like painting baby food jars all one color (maybe dark blue or red?) for a series of votives. With the minimal cost involved, I do think it would be worth trying again.