{Tutorial} Kids' Artwork as Gifts

Do you remember the toddler artwork I featured earlier on this blog where my 2-year-old niece painted the background of four canvases and I added LOVE to them?  This is the same concept, except using both of my nieces!  They worked together to make a beautiful painting for my sister for Mother's Day - a very special gift that she will treasure.

I bought a pack of 16 x 20 canvases at Hobby Lobby (my favorite craft store) for super cheap.  Loaded up on acrylic paint, brushes, palettes, and water bowls. We were ready to rock.  The 2-year-old used three shades of blue for the background and went to town painting.  Once I convinced her painting her knees wasn't a good idea - to just stick with her hands - we got things moving.  Baby niece used a large craft paint brush and her hands to cover the canvas.  We flipped it around a few times to get all the white area covered (and helped just a little).

While baby niece was painting, teen niece used the back of wrapping paper to draw an artistic Palmetto Tree.  Next: cut it out, dry the massive amount of paint baby niece used on the canvas, and use the wrapping paper tree as a template, lightly tracing the tree onto the canvas in pencil. CAREFUL: you don't want to poke a hole in the canvas or make too dark of a mark.

Teen niece painted over the outline with dark blue...

Filled it in and then got crazy artsy with it. By mixing colors she had shades of blue for dots inside the tree.  She added a crescent moon in the corner, and gray "moonlights" to one side of the tree.  White/yellow dashes in the gray just to make it interesting.

She did such a good job, I love all the fun and unique things she added that created texture and movement to the piece.  Love it!

Since teen niece will be at her mom's house for Mother's Day, we celebrated a week early and surprised my sister with this coolness! She's a SC History teacher and she LOOOOOOOOVED it.  (For you non-South Carolinians, the Palmetto Tree is part of our state flag.  We are very proud of it!)
The best part is this gift is nice enough to be displayed in the living room; both girls feel a sense of pride and "ownership" in seeing their talents displayed in the house and for creating something so nice for their mom/stepmom; and my sister treasures a gift from her girls.

I really do encourage you to try it and share your experience with me! I'd love to see what you create.  Please don't think it has to be perfect - that's part of the special uniqueness of the artwork! Just let them go for it and see their pride when it's all complete. :)

Wanna pin it? Use this:

Painted Pottery

I had to wait to post until I gifted this new craft - it's a hand-painted over-sized mug! LOVE these types of things and the size is perfect for soup, cereal, whatever you wanna chow down on. A new paint pottery place opened up about 35-45 minutes from me and I had to try it out. And try it out. And try it out! This is the most recent piece I completed and gifted to my friend in Alabama when I went to go visit with her.

The cool thing about this place is they save the dried up paint from where people have squirted out too much paint for their object and turn it into paint chips. Then you can apply a layer of wet paint and "glue" the chips to your pottery.  When the paint is unfired, it looks NOTHING like what it does once it is fired, so you really don't know what colors the paint chips are - it's just a luck of a draw kinda thing.  So I knew I had to use that obnoxious yellow green, wanted it pair with blues and figured - heck, the paint chips can't make it any weirder looking so let's go for it!

I'm so glad I did because I LOVE IT! The paint chips melt down the curve of the mug and just makes such a cool effect.  My niece tried it on her pottery - one piece was a flat cross and one an owl figurine.  The cross paint chips melted but made colored spots where they were.  Only in the places with lots of chips in one small space did they mix together.  Her owl figurine had the colors melting together as they ran down the curve of the owl's back, so it was really cool.

On the outside I etched swirlies just to make it cute and girlie.  They aren't super noticeable but I'm still glad I didn't try to paint them on. That would have made  mess, I think.

Anyway, you can always use Pintrest for tons of ideas on what to paint on all types of pottery - from your child's handprints and feet prints, to just trying your hand at something that interests you.  If I find some more pics from our painting trips, I'll come back and post them here.  Until then - go try your hand at some creativity! :)