Spin Art Snails DIY inspired by Littlest Pet shops

Our home is full of Littlest Pet Shops. No matter what room you are sitting in, or which direction you are looking you can usually spot a pet shop (or three) somewhere. So it should come as no surprise that when I brought out the salad spinner to make spin art snails they quickly began to resemble Littlest Pet Shops.

Here is how we made them:

1) Gather your supplies. You will need:
-White cardstock or tag board paper
-coloured construction paper
-salad spinner (we have one just for art)
-paint (we used our watercolour magic paints as I love how vibrant they are)
-glitter dust (optional)
-scissors
-items you need that are not pictured: markers, glue, pencil

 

 2) Remove the inner piece from your salad spinner and place it on the white cardstock. Trace the outer ring. When finished lift the spinner off and put your spinner back together (and set aside). You are left with a dotted circle on your paper.

3) With a pair of scissors cut your circle out leaving about 1/4" allowance around the outside of your circles pencil line as shown below (this allows your circle to take up more space and stay in place better when spinning).

4) Place this cut out circle in the bottom of the salad spinner so the pencil lines are facing down and are not visible.

 5) Drip the paint onto the paper inside the spinner. Try to keep the paint as close to the centre of the paper as possible.

6) Put the lid on the spinner and spin, spin, spin it.

You may need to repeat step 5 and 6 until you get the desired amount of paint swirls on your paper. The liquid watercolour paints we used leave thin trails. Thicker tempera paint will leave wider trails.

7) When you are happy with the amount of paint in your design you can sprinkle on some glitter dust to give it a sparkle. Then set aside to dry, the glitter will dry into the paint and stick.

8) Draw a snail pattern on either white cardstock or coloured construction paper. Originally I thought I would just draw a basic slug shape and attach the circle spin art shell to it but I got a request to draw a pet shop snail and that was the end of that.

Here are the two outlines we used. Feel free to save them to you computer and print them out if you don't feel like you can draw it yourself. I'd appreciate a link back in the comments if you do make them using these pictures.

This pattern has LPS snails in it for ideas for colour combos

9) Decorate your snail with markers. Sierra chose a white snail as she wanted to colour her snail to match one of her actual pet shops. Aayla chose pink construction paper to colour on designs.

Pet shops like to colour too

 11) Cut out around the snail as shown below with the pink construction paper snail. Then glue on your spin art circle when it is dry.

Sierra chose to not cut hers out as she intends to draw things on in the background later. Either way they turned out cute.

Spin art is always fun but if you have a snail lover in your house these are sure to be a hit.

Did you know that snails lay eggs? Neither did we until this happened while Sierra was holding a snail this past summer. Learn more about snail eggs HERE.

In the past we made a different type of spin art. Click the picture to visit that post and see how we did it.

Source

Have you made spin art before? Have you expanded your play by turning your spin art into anything else? Snails? Flowers? I'd love to see your ideas.