I introduced the technique of paint blotting to Beckett with this easy art project. He was enamored with it and made 5 (!) whole paintings before switching to body painting. This might be a record.

If you do this with older kids, it’s fun to wait for them to dry and then have them look long and hard at them, figure out what they look like, and add in details with Sharpies or colored pencils.

Of course, this is a take on the Rorschach inkblot test used for psychological evaluation, so feel free to diagnose your child with something after analyzing what they’ve made…

Materials:

• Sturdy white paper (like card stock)
• Tempera paints

Directions:

• Fold the pieces of paper in half
• Open them and let your kid paint on one half. Beckett insisted on one color per paper, but feel free to mix!
• Let them close the paper and press down really well to transfer the paint to the other side of the paper
• Set aside to dry
• Let them go back in and add to the paintings with colored pencils or markers when they’re completely dry

Looking for more Easy Art Projects? <<<< Click there. And by all means, check out my Art Projects for Little Kids Pin board.

The post Easy Art Projects: Paint Blotting With Preschoolers appeared first on Artchoo!.

So first off, I am thrilled to pieces to be guest posting at Nurture Store today. I’ve got a cutey-cute little project on sticker resist t-shirts over there, and we had an absolute blast making these. They’re a good beginning-of-summer art project.

Secondly, I read about this really cool Kickstarter project that I thought I’d share…

It’s called STEAM Carnival by Two Bit Circus, 2 guys with backgrounds in engineering and entertaining, who have managed to take the idea of the traditional carnival and supercharge it with lasers, robots, and electricity.

This is where art meets science and sucks kids in completely. Watch their Kickstarter video for a better idea of what they’re about:

Isn’t this exciting? This is exactly the kind of thing that gets kids excited about learning- I’ll bet one day at the STEAM Carnival would equal a year’s worth of education. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but this is the sort of experience kids internalize and the excitement and curiosity permeates their little brains in ways classroom learning just can’t.

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Spring art projects are popping up all over the place, and we’ve caught the bug! In this art project, we’re focusing on tape resist and water color. Remember my poost on Watercolor Techniques? We dipped into those a little bit.

Materials:

• Watercolor Paper
• Watercolor paints
• Blue painter’s tape
• Big old salt crystals, or anything you want to use along with the paints. See these watercolor ideas.

Directions:

Have your kids rip pieces of tape and “draw” with it on the watercolor paper. Avoid using the straight edges of the tape, as they don’t look as good on the finished product.

They can use long pieces of tape and shorter pieces to form their flowers, and they will be focusing on the negative space. This means, they will need to think ahead as they are laying down the tape: whatever is not taped off will be painted, and will be the finished flower. Whatever is taped off will ultimately show up as white lines around the flower.

Have them use different paint brushed for the different colors to minimize mixing and ending up with muddy colors. (Unless, of course, they want to get adventurous and mix some colors! Bonus points.)

We sprinkled coarse salt on the flower and the stem because we were feeling nutty and wanted to add in a little texture.

Remember to let the paint dry before you brush off the salt! Peel off the tape verrrry gently. Honestly, we’ve never been able to peel off the tape perfectly- there are always a few little bits of paper that come up with the tape. You just have to embrace the paper’s texture in these cases….

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This post is linked up with the…..

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Do you have a dedicated playroom in your home? Our whole house is pretty much a playroom, but I’m thinking this may need to change. Quickly. Kids are big and loud and everywhere, and they have lots of stuff. Bedrooms, it seems, are not large enough to house all of this stuff, as they like to leave a trail of items everywhere they go.

I love playrooms for what they represent- a place to store kid things, a special room dedicated solely to playing and exploring, a place that can be shared and enjoyed amongst siblings and friends, and an area of the home that can be pushed a bit in terms of practicality.

Obviously they need to serve their intended purpose, but it’s an obvious space in which to push the limits and be edgy and creative, design-wise.

Here are 2 groupings of playrooms to inspire you and make you drool. This is one of my very favorite Pinterest boards to pin to, so I have tons of great ideas veritably stockpiled….

The first group is more subdued, with the focus on beautiful, modern design.

Clockwise from top left: fawn and forest, Apartment Therapy (Restoration Hardware goods), Nordic Design, Baby Center Blog

The second group explodes with color and fun, unexpected details.

Clockwise from top left: Marie Claire Maison, By Stephanie Lynn, Houzz (Liz Carroll Interiors), Covet Garden

The post Playroom Roundup appeared first on Artchoo!.

I thought up this paper mache project and started giggling when I envisioned the finished product. It took a lot of trial and error, and *possibly* a few curses, but if you follow my directions, it’s a really fun project to do with your kids.

The key here is patience, which is a really tough one for me, so if I can do it, you can, too. You must let the paper mache dry completely between layers!

At first I tried to make these with newsprint and glue-based paper mache (watered down Elmer’s). This was a disaster. The newsprint didn’t lay well on the mini balloons or pencils, the paper mache was too slippery, and I hadn’t yet devised my ingenius drying rack.

So. After we attached balloons to pencils…..

 
…..we stuck the pencils, point down, into wax paper – on a cookie rack – on top of a plastic cereal container. Remember to put wax paper under the whole thing to catch drips. This made ALL the difference in the world when paper mache-ing, and made it actually fun instead of frustrating!

How to Make Paper Mache

Put a cup of flour into a bowl. Add small amounts of water until it is thin enough to coat the paper pieces, but thick enough so it isn’t runny- a little thinner than yogurt. You can see how thick I make mine in the following video (delightful background sounds courtesy of Beckett.)

 
Tear the paper towel pieces fairly small. (I just realized that my below photo includes newsprint instead of the paper towels. Oops!)

After your first layer is completely dry, you can remove the pencils from their drying rack and paper mache down the pencil as far as you desire. While you’re at it, slap another layer over the balloon area. We just let these dry lying down on wax paper this time.

Once these are dry, gesso them to prime them for the paint and cover the ugly yellowy paper mache color.

Paint! (I wish we had made even more of these to play around with different paint designs.)

Materials: (linked materials will take you right to Amazon)

• Water balloons  (and balloon pump)
• Pencils
• Masking tape
• Paper towels
• Flour
• Wax paper
• Gesso
• Acrylic paints

Directions:

• Use a small plastic balloon blower-upper thing to blow up the water balloons. Please don’t attempt to use your face for this, or your jaws will never forgive you.
• Attach balloons to eraser end of pencils using masking tape.
• Rip up little pieces of paper towels.
• Mix up paper mache and cover the balloons with one layer of it on the paper towel pieces.
• After they are completely dry, paper mache the pencil part and the balloon for another layer.
• After these are completely dry, gesso them,let dry, and paint them. We used a small flat (#4) brush, started at the top of each balloon and spiraled down with the paint colors.

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I’m a year old! Oh my goodness. I can’t believe it, and this year flew by so quickly. I’m actually feeling a little bit emotional- Do you want to know the story behind why Artchoo was even created?

I’ll tell ya.

Setting: April 2012, St. Louis, MO. Bloggy Bootcamp, a blogging conference by The SITS Girls. They are a blogging resource for women and hold mini blog conferences all year in different locations. So anyway, have you heard of Laurie Turk? She is the mastermind behind Tip Junkie, and an exceedingly successful blogger.

I was at the conference because I was finally (after 5 years) trying to figure out how to turn blogging into my gig, with my first blog, Craftwhack. (Now called: It’s All So Funny. (potty mouth alert)) I was talking to Laurie at a pre-blog conference cocktail party.

Here’s roughly how the conversation went:

Laurie: So what’s your blog?

Me: It’s called Craftwhack….

Laurie: Oh! A craft blog!

Me: Well, er, uh, no. I actually don’t write about crafts at all.

Laurie: BLOG FAIL!

I went through many emotions that weekend, including embarrassment, indignation, denial, and several others, culminating finally in acceptance. Okay. I would need to change my blog name.

But wait. Why don’t I…

…start a new blog!?!? Boom.

It all happened that dramatically, and I spent the next 3 hours scribbling furiously in a notebook. Ideas, potential names, drawings, etc. I think I called Christian 3 times that night to make him brainstorm with me.

It was definitely one of those moments of absolute certainty, where everything aligns, and you don’t have time to talk yourself out of something because your mind is buzzing too loudly with excitement.

So anyway, I’m thankful for each and every person who comes here to visit, and I hope you’ll eat some cake today to celebrate with me. (It’s a good excuse, right?)

I’m also thankful to Laurie Turk for being honest and savvy.

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Today I happen to be featured at the blog Mama Smiles. My post is part of an awesome series Maryanne has, called World Culture for Kids. Please go check it out, and then peruse some of the other posts in the series.

The post Artchoo is a Year Old! appeared first on Artchoo!.

I recently stumbled across the work of Samuel Conlogue, and couldn’t even comprehend what it was that he did. I knew he was an artist, and I knew I was really impressed by his work, but I was confused.

The world of computer-generated design can be very confusing to those of us who aren’t all that technologically inclined. I mean, I do a lot of my own coding on my websites, so I’m completely impressed with myself, but it ends there.

Check these out:

He created these using a COMPUTER.

Also, I’m fine with showing my kids these images, but he also warned me that when he presented his work to a high school class, he got feedback that “…some of the kids present felt uncomfortable with the sexual nature of the full body images. The one parent in attendance apparently agreed. It never occurred to me this would be an issue in a class of mostly 17 and 18 year graphics students. So considering this I would suggest only using the shoulder up images.”

I’m throwing caution to the wind and posting the images, but I’ll let you decide if you want to show them to your kids.

Here are some more pieces I snagged from his portfolio:

I asked him to explain to me what he does in terms that a child would understand, because I think kids should see what artists in the real world do. Contrary to what I believed when I was little, not all artists stand behind an easel all day, full of angst.

Here’s what he told me:

I produce images and animations by creating three dimensional characters, environments and objects or whatever you can imagine in a 3D graphics program. Once you have built the objects in the computer you can create textures and materials to give parts of the objects different properties like metal, paint, glass etc. Finally you add lights of different types, colors and intensities just like a photographer would in a photo studio. Then the final step is to “Render” which is where the computer calculates the light, materials and objects to create your final images.

So what do you think? Cool, huh? Or are you still thinking about how impressed you are about me doing coding?

The post Kids Learn About Professional Artists- 3D Graphics appeared first on Artchoo!.

Books are such fun art projects for kids. Making them is a project in itself, and then filling them up is a whole different adventure. My Sketchbook Cover Ideas post was one of my most popular so far, so it’s apparent many of you like book projects for kids, too!

This one is celebrating Spring with some bright colors and playful dots. I love dots. A lot.

Here’s what you do:

Grab a piece of watercolor paper and stick office dot stickers all over it.

Using acrylic paints, (you can use watercolors instead; the acrylics are just nice and bright) paint half of the paper one color and half another. We used green and yellow because they are Springariffic.

Peel the dots off and trace a bowl or something round on the back of the paper on each color.

Cut out the circles, and these are your covers for your book.

Use the same bowl to cut out a small stack of printer paper. Holding the stack in between the two covers, use a hole punch to press into the edge of the stack. Unless you are super strong, you probably won’t punch through, but the indentations left in the paper will show you where to punch through a few pieces at a time.

Tie your embroidery thread through the hole, looping it through twice. Double knot.

Tie your beads on and snip off the leftover thread.

We used a metal ruler to hold on top of each cover to bend it back. This creases it somewhat and makes the book easier to open.

Boom! Sketch or write to your heart’s content

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The post 100 Days of Play: Making Mini Books With Kids appeared first on Artchoo!.

Hi! Just a quick post today to officially present my tweaked site design. Yes, it’s terribly hard for bloggers to leave their blog design alone. I’m sort of liking this, though, so I think it will stick for a while….

Also, what would a post be without visuals?!?!? Here are a couple of easy, quick, fairly neat projects Beckett enjoyed working on recently. They both use paint dobbers. Love these things.

First off, I had seen this paint-dobber-on-coffee-filters project on Pinterest, and actually bought coffee filters specifically for this reason.

It was fun and fast. The ink from the dobbers absorbs nicely into the filters. Also, please notice the life preserver, which makes a lovely superhero costume.

Next up- hold onto your hats- I broke out the doilies. I used 2 tiny bits of masking tape to secure the doily to a piece of white card stock and he dobbed away, and thought it was pretty neato when I pulled the doily away to reveal the design underneath.

Pretty!

The post A Sort of Random Post appeared first on Artchoo!.

Remember my Anatomy art projects for kids roundup? That was an idea from Aruna from Young Yoga Masters, who I am a huge fan of. (Of whom I am a huge fan?) Plus, she gives me awesome ideas- this post probably never would have happened with out her asking if I had any ideas for mandala projects.

Yay! I love digging in and researching ideas. I found a wonderful project on Incredible Art that we tried, and it’s a good one.

First, a little info about mandalas. Mandala is a Sanskrit word loosely meaning circle. I assumed that mandalas were solely a Buddhist art form, but they have been created by people from different religions for centuries.

They are intricate, repeating geometric shapes that make up a circle. Abstract concepts can be difficult for kids to understand, but basically mandalas symbolize our universe, and the idea that everything in our universe is connected. Heady stuff!

I like kids making mandalas because they get a taste of design, proportion, and working with abstraction. Plus, they are meditative. And mathy. And beautiful.

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