Creative Ideas For A Wonderful Winter Day With Your Kids

I will be the first to admit that I am not a winter person!  I have to drag myself outside and usually my time outdoors in the winter is very short!  So as my kids get a little older I have been making them go outside for some fresh air and have had the joy of watching them through the window.  However, I thought I needed to make myself get outside as I find their time outdoors is short-lived as well.  So I came up with some structured creative activities to enjoy the wonders of winter!

Here are some creative ideas that you can do to make for a wonderful winter day!  After bundling myself and three kids up, we walked out in knee deep snow and I encouraged my kids to see the beauty in winter.  As much as I love the white in the snow, I love even more the way bright colours pop on the snow!  So the first thing we did was to make some snowball soup!  Except the snow wasn't co-operating too well and we couldn't make snowballs.  So I piled the snow into a big hill and we had snow hill soup instead.   Still fun!!!  We poured liquid watercolours all over our snow hill. (you can also use food colouring).

What good is a time outside in the snow without making a snow angel?  I thought we would add a little creative edge to this by taking our liquid watercolour paints to outline our snow angels.   I just had the kids pour the paint straight from the bottle but I would recommend having little spray bottles that you mix your paint and water in and then have them spritz the paint out.

We looked around to see what else we could be creative with and found a few lonely pine cones hanging from our tree.  So we grabbed hold of them and decided to paint them up.  We need a few more to doodle on and we'll make them into a cool centre piece along with some fun papermache winter birds.

       

And lastly, my favourite thing to look at in the winter is the icicles!  I love the way they look.  The beautiful patterns that the icicles make as they wind and twirl is amazing.  The way they seem to be growing all around our house right now is making it look like a humble ice castle?   So I reached up high, picked some of these beautiful sculptures, and then took them inside where I needed to warm up!  I filled a glass fish bowl with snow, arranged my icicles like a flower bouquet and then poured liquid watercolours over them.  They looked really cool!  Kind of like coloured glass.  Too bad they melted so fast and didn't last!   But they would have made a nice centre piece for a winter picnic...except I don't do winter picnics!



So there you have it!  A few chilly creative activities!  Of course after our time of winter creating we came inside and warmed up with popsicles!  Have a wonderfully creative wintery day!

Trish

A Five Star Adventure In Juicing

Today I felt like I had an overload of creative projects.  Normally I love spending lots of time creating, but today I just felt like a needed a wee break from it all.  I kind of felt like someone who had stuffed themselves with so much food that they couldn't eat another bite!  I have been stuffing myself with creative projects, blogs, tutorials, and I feel stuffed.  So instead, I decided to spend some time in the kitchen enjoying something I also love to do... eating!
A box of mangoes arrived at our house last night and it was just the incentive I needed to get my juicer back out!  So I did just that and made the family some yummy mango strawberry juice! All sugar free, and the kids drank it all up!

The juicer! 

The hardest part of juicing is cutting up all the fruit and vegetables, but it's worth it.  Today I am making strawberry mango juice!

Mangos make for a thick juice so you may want to delete it with some sparkling water. 

Although juicing may be a bit of work, I love the benefits that I have felt from it.  After doing it for a number of consecutive days, I even noticed a difference in my skin.  It was much clearer and it boosted my energy as well... especially on the days where I was lacking sleep.  It also kick starts your metabolism and can help in shedding some extra pounds.  But above all else, fresh fruits and vegetables are delicious!  I sound like an info commercial!  YIKES !!

Here is a recipe that I thought was appropriate at this time of the year as it seems many are fighting off colds and the flu .  This is called the Immune System builder from the book, Big book Of Juices And Green Smoothies by Cherie Calbom.

1 handful of parsley or watercress
2-3 Kale leaves
1 cup of blueberries
1 green apple
1/2 cucumber
1 lemon peeled

Cheers to you and good health!  Enjoy!

Trish

10 Inspiring Ways To Get Creativity Flowing In Your Kids

Sometimes you need a little inspiration and help in order to get your kids to create something new.  So today I am talking about finding creative props that can help get the creative juices flowing.  I know that many times if I just hand my children a piece of paper and a box of crayons they will usually start colouring something.  But sometimes I like to stretch them a bit in their creativity, yet still have them create that they really like.  So here are a few ideas to help create new projects.

1. Googly eyes:  Paste googly eyes on a surface of some sort.  It can just be a blank piece of paper, a wood board, or even a canvas.  Tell them then to create a face or a fun creature or animal around the goggly eyes.  My kids loved this and some really cool art was created as well!  We even gave their goggly eyed creatures names, which then turned into a time of story telling because a picture tells a story and they just created characters for a story.  If you do this with a group of kids, they can collaborate and make a story together using all of their characters as a part of the story.

2. Team work:  I begin with some designs or doodles on a canvas and then get my kids to add to it. I allow them to have the freedom to add what they want and use their own unique style.  It's awesome to see different styles coming together.

3. Pictures from a magazine:  Paste pieces of pictures from a magazine onto a blank paper and then have them finish the picture.  This was a fun one for the kids to do and they came up with some great ideas!

4. Finger print doodles:  Make finger prints on paper by pressing their thumbs on a stamp pad and transferring them to your paper.  Doodle around the finger prints turning them into doodle pictures.  This was so much fun and we made all kinds of little doodle creatures!

5. Funky object:  Have them find an object in the room and draw it.  Then have them create a funky creature from it.  I got this idea from a really cool book called The Ice Cream Coot And Other Rare Birds by Arnold Label.

6. Play dough and toys: When all else fails, bring out the play dough!  My son loves using it while playing with his trains, and makes his own tracks for them.

7. What's in the house?:  Using a cardboard box, get the kids to paint and make a house (adding doors and windows) and then have them create objects to go in their house.

8. My colourful pallet:  Hand them a canvas of white paper that has random shapes of watercolour pencil drawn on it.  Have them add water to the shapes with a brush and create a picture incorporating all the paint shapes.

9.  Drawing pictures from Numbers:  This is fun to do.  Start by drawing out a number and then see if you can create it into a picture of something.



10.  Fill in the Frame:  Draw a picture of different frames and then have your children fill in the frame.  We have chalkboard walls in our home, so we use those.  However if you don't have this available to you, you can do it on any large piece of paper as well.

So there you have it.  10 great ideas to help you get the creative juices flowing in your kids!  Hope you are feeling inspired, and have fun creating!

Trish

How To Create A Funtastical Valentines Day Party For Your Kids

This year I promised my kids a Valentines party!  Not every year does this happen, but this year seemed like a good time to have one.  So the planning began, starting with a few invites, and we were on our way.

So today I welcome you to our Funtastical Valentines party!  Sit back and relax as the work has been
all done!   I know how busy and energetic kids can be so I wanted to include a variety of activities for them to do to keep them going.  

Since I love including art in our events, this Valentines party was going to be no exception.  I have  learned that when having a group of kids it is good to be organized!  So I had some preparing to do in order for things to go smoothly.  Things such as having all my art supplies out and set up, water jugs, paint brushes, paper, and of course cupcakes.

The kids arrived with stacks of Valentines to hand out, and if they didn't have any red on them they were sure to get a splash of red face paint on their cheek.  

I decided to use the cupcakes as my canvas.  We painted them by using food colouring mixed with water, and a brand new pack of paint brushes. You really can paint just about anything!  It was just like using water colours, except on icing.  Adding sparkles and hearts was the extra little touch to have some fabulous looking cupcakes that quickly got gobbled up by some hungry little artists (I don't think I have ever eaten my artwork before).

                         

And what would be cupcakes without a nice steeped cup of bubblegum tea?  A perfect match for any Valentines day party.  We added a splash of very berry juice to cool it off.   It was a great hit as the kids drank from their dainty little china teacups.

With blue and purple lips, they were ready for some Valentine art!  I choose a project that was fairly simple for all ages, and fun at the same time.  Glue, salt and watercolours!  Taking my glue bottle, I used the end like a pencil and generously squeezed out glue to form hearts.  I then added some salt and shook it around so that it stuck to the glue.  The last step was to take liquid watercolours and an eyedropper and add them to the salt.  It created a cool looking piece of art! 

Who knew that food colouring could make such faces?

My next plan was a candy hunt outside to help get some of that energy out.  The only problem is that I had to be a little flexible with this as the weather wasn't cooperating too well.  We had very cold temperatures and a chilly windchill.  So I originally was going to bury a bag full of treasure (candy) in the snow out back but decided to bring things inside.  I created different clues for the kids to find and then they had to go as a group and find the buried treasure.  It wasn't too buried in my purple bath tub!  There lay candy for all!!!  Just what every kid needs after some very sweet cupcakes.

It was lots of fun to have the kids over and they all played so well . We moms even got a chance to sit and chat. A Valentines party that I know my kids will remember for a long time as they had fun playing and creating with others! 

More Mixed Media!

Lately I have been on a mixed media frenzy!  I really love it!  I think it's because I feel so much freedom in it.  There isn't that worry of messing things up because I just keep layering over until I get the look I like!  It's fun and to me it's a great way to play and experiment with other mediums that I haven't tried before.  So this week I have taken an old piece of wood that used to be on our old woodshed.  I primed it with primer, began painting, and here's what I got!

I took an old board from our former woodshed, primed it, and then painted it with a yellow undertone.

I then added some decorative tissue paper from the Tim Holtz collection.  I love this stuff.

I added lots of Mod Podge to it, beneath and on top of the tissue paper.  I also highlighted it with some blue acrylic paint.

Probably one of the most challenging parts of mixed media is if you are wanting to put lettering on your piece.  There are a few options to do this without making it really difficult.  You can free hand and write your message, but I personally find that hard to do.  I don't have a problem with writing or the lettering but rather the spacing.  It can look very unprofessional if your spacing isn't consistent. This includes height and width of each letter.  You can use stamps as they work great, but you may not have them available or have the right size of stamps.  So another option is finding a font that you like on the computer. There are also websites available for this.  My personal favourite is www.dafont.com.  I  types out the message and the size of lettering I wanted.  After I have printed it, I now had to transfer it onto my artwork.  What I found works really well is taking a charcoal pencil and tracing over the lettering on one side.  I then pressed it down onto the canvas or board and this left a print of the lettering on the canvas that I could then paint over with a fine brush.

I then added some extra little things to bring the piece together, like some old buttons.

I also added some burlap and tags with some whimsical houses that I sketched out.

So there it is.  Have fun creating this week and don't be afraid to experiment.  You may just find your niche! Happy creating.

Trish

Print Making With Kids

My daughter loves to make cards!  She loves collecting used envelopes to re-use and then add them to her collection of cards.  So for something different I thought I would do some printmaking with the kids for a different way of making cards.  This is a fun activity that is easy for kids too, and they can repeat it over and over.  We created our own template but there are also many other things you can use to print make.  Potatoes and apples work well, or anything with a cool pattern.  I also like to encourage kids to come up with their own pattern and designs.  It gives them some freedom as well as allows them to create out of the uniqueness inside of them.

Some things you will need are foam, a pen, a brier, a plastic plate, paper or card stock, and paint.

You can use paint, however I really like to use block printing ink.  It is much thicker and applies really nice with the brier. 

I use pieces of foam with a ballpoint pen.  I press fairly hard so that what I am drawing leaves an imprint on the foam.

Why not make a doodle print. The nice thing about making a print is you can use  the template over and over trying different colours.

I like to mix more then one colour when I do a print. Here I have chosen two colours that I know will blend together nicely. I press fairly firm with my brier and cover the entire foam surface.

I then place it face down on my card stock.  Anna is helping by applying pressure on the other side.

I generally find the second print is better. The first one usually has a little too much paint on it. This is my doodle print.

Anna's requested print...Strawberry Shortcake.  We mixed yellow and pink together.

Nathan's print of Toothless from How to Train a Dragon.

Typically I like to eat these and not paint them, but I had few extra's kicking around and thought they would make some interesting prints if painted.  I used acrylic paint with a brush to make these stamps.

The grapefruit!

The apple.

The pepper!

Happy Creating! 

Trish