With Valentine's Day just around the corner, we have been reading Gracie's most FAVORITE Valentine story over and over....Ann Estelle: The Queen of Hearts. It is a really cute book- has beautiful Mary Engelbreit illustrations and the story has a good lesson. It is a perfect book for getting in the mood for making Valentines. Gracie was thrilled because today was FINALLY the day of Valentine's Day party at preschool (JUST like Ann Estelle's class, mom!)
Oh, how I love being the mom of two little girls. If you haven't yet figured that out by now! We have been elbow-deep in Valentine creations the past couple of weeks. I won't be showcasing them all in blogland, but here is one of a handful of impromptu-napkin-and-marker Valentine's that turned out surprisingly well given the materials :)
We made a few Valentines using a layered painting technique that I loved as a student myself and never thought of doing with my kids until now. While blog-hopping the other day I saw a tip about "framing" kids art (pre-creative process) with painter's tape to create clean edges, giving kids art a finished look. I thought it was genius and had one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments. I of course now can't trace the source but if you're out there, thank you!
So we made some Valentines using both the "framing" idea and also the layering technique. I put some tape on their papers and let them paint with one color family. After the first layer dried, I re-taped and gave them some other paint colors. The girls had so much fun and the Valentines turned out great. We will definitely be doing layer painting again on a larger scale!
Happy crafting!
The idea about tape around the edge really does give the pictures a nice, clean look! We love Engelbreit's illustrations as well. I'm especially fond of her Mother Goose book.
ReplyDeleteThose look great!
ReplyDeleteLayering paint is such a great idea.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for linking to the Virtual Valentine’s Day Party on my blog. Please take a moment between now and the end of the party Monday night to visit a few of the other party guests. I would love to everyone who linked up to have other guests stop by for a visit.
Remember if you visit two guests and leave me a comment that you did you could win a $15 Visa Gift Card.
Stopping over from the VDay Party! The paintings are great and wonderful book too! Kerri
ReplyDeleteThese are great. We have that same table cloth at my house that we use for crafting!
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