DIY Watercolour Valentines

My girls love painting and for what ever reason it's something we haven't done in awhile. Both girls were very excited when I brought the watercolour paints out today.

These beautiful valentines can be made for almost any age. If your child can hold a paintbrush to paint; your child can make these with a little help.

Here's how we made them:

1) Gather your supplies.
-Watercolour paper (we used postcard sized paper and we cut up larger paper into smaller shapes too)
-Watercolour paint (ours is an assortment of treasure hunting at thrift stores)
-A board to tape your papers to
-Tape (masking preferably)
-Frisket masking fluid
-Paint pallet & brushes
-2 cups of water, paper towel and a pencil with eraser
-Table salt optional

2) Cut your watercolour paper to your desired size. Secure to your board with tape. Taping the cards down not only helps them stay in place for little hands but it also stops the cards from curling up when wet. The tape pictured above needs to be moistened with paper towel as shown below (we ran into some difficulty with my tape which you will see later. I would recommend you actually use masking tape instead).

 3) Draw a heart shape somewhere on your paper (or other shape for different holidays or thank you cards as seen HERE where my inspiration for these came from).

 4) Paint the heart with the Frisket Masking Fluid. Set aside to dry (do not use expensive brushes with the masking fluid as it can ruin them. It may clump up and be hard to remove from your brush).

5) When dry, paint over your whole paper with a heavy coat of clean water (you have two cups of water so you can have a clean one just for wetting each paper when you begin a new piece and the other for washing your brush before switching colours).

6) Now using your watercolour paints (tempera watercolour paint blocks will work as well if you do not have water colour paints), paint over your page with as many different colours as you would like. Paint directly over your masked heart.

 7) Optional: You can sprinkle a bit of salt over your wet painting. The salt absorbs some of the paint pigment and leaves crystal like shapes.

8) Repeat with as many papers as you need for valentines. When finished set aside to dry.

10) When your paintings are completely dry, remove the Frisket. To do this rub it firmly but gently to roll it off.

11) Remove your tape. This is where we ran into problems. My tape was over 10 years old. I purchased it for a watercolour course I took for this exact purpose. Apparently it lost it's effectiveness over the years and stuck to the cards so we had to cut the edging off.

On our second batch of cards we used regular masking tape and it worked like a charm. Also the edging left (when the tape cooperates) is a beautiful finish.

Each card is beautiful and very unique. The effect of the watercolours blending is beautiful and the salt gives it a crystallized effect that I love.

Someday I want to take a wet on wet painting and make it into one of these star lanterns. I think they are so beautiful.

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Have you tried wet on wet watercolour painting before? If not and you are interested in learning more there are more in depth instructions here.

While we had the paints out Sierra made a dolphin picture for her room. I drew her a dolphin and she did the rest all by herself.

 We hung it up on her rainbow frame wall in her room. All those frames are round or oval so we had to squish the painting in the best we could.

Do you have a favourite water colour project?

Mhai O Mhai Beads GIVEAWAY!!! (giveaway is now closed)

*** giveaway is now closed***

Who doesn't like a giveaway???

Did you see THIS post the other day on the developmental benefits of beading and our visit to Mhai O Mhai Beads in Barrie, Ontario? If you missed it go check it out. My daughter and I had a great time during our home school class. We were pleased with the class we took and their selection of beads. 

Don't forget to come back here to enter a giveaway!!!

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Carolynn Yeates, the owner of Mhai O Mhai Beads has offered a $15 gift card to one lucky Imagination Station reader.

*This gift card is valid for in store shopping only*

(bare with me please as I try out Rafflecopter for the first time)

Contest winner will be announced Feb 3rd...Good Luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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.

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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.