First Day of School

Ugh. School again.  Just when summer starts slowing down, school starts.  I don't know about all the moms out there that can't wait until they have a few extra kid free hours, but I don't want school to start. I love school, but this year I got a bottom locker, PE first thing in the morning, and a teacher I don't like.  I thought I ought to let you gals know that since I am going back to school, I won't be able to post half as much.  

This year I need a notebook, and  I got the cheapest and un-prettiest one at target for about a quarter.  Then I painted over all the white writing with black, and then painted on doodle flowers. Look How cute it is now!

 Maddie

Paint Palette

This post is completely dedicated to different kinds of things that you can use to dump, mix, and scoop paint from.  And here they are:

 Cardstock is a great one.

I covered a full page in paint and now its a piece of art itself.

Small glass bowls are nice too.  I started using these the other day but they are nice for watercolors.

Ice cube trays are great if you are using lot of colors of mixing colors.

Paper plates

Plastic trays. (I LOVE these things.  I have like 12 of them (plus I got them free). They are one of the best surfaces to work on for beading, painting, molding clay, or anything except baking (yeah... I accidentally tried that once and there were little brown circles under every cookie and a burning smell)

The bottoms of soda bottles have 5 little pockets to put paint in (Just chop off the bottom).

Medicine bottles are great. They are air-tight and leak-proof.

Then there are regular old plastic paint palettes.  They are cheap, only about a buck at craft stores, but why spend money on one when there are a hundred other free things to use.
Keep Painting! 

Maddie

Watercolors on the Go

I have been searching for a way to do watercolors in the car, or at the doctors office, or at whatever boring thing that is next on my list.  Then I finally had an idea.  I took a small plastic box with a lid and squirted watercolors into it.  I did a little dab of all the colors I wanted and left the lid blank so I could mix colors.

I let the paint dry (I used Reeves watercolor tubes, they are around 10 bucks for a set at Hobby Lobby) and took a small travel size shampoo bottle from a hotel (that I had been saving for a year), emptied it and filled it with water.  All I need now is a paintbrush small enough to fit in my little box and a pad of paper and I will be ready to paint.

Make sure the shampoo bottle fits in the box because once that paint is dry, it fits along with it. Now you are ready to paint the boring hours away!
Here is my little set:

 And here is my first work of art with my set:

Maddie

Printing Cards

There is nothing like printing cards in the morning.  All you need to do is gather a bunch of random things to stamp with and some paint. I didn't use stamp pads.  Go through you recycling bin, and take apart you empty floss container (inside of floss containers, there is a small yellow cylinder that is perfect for printing).  You need to look in unexpected places.  Here is some of the pile of stuff I used.

 I used:

• crayon
• crayon bottoms
• milk lids 
• milk lids covered in ripped tape
• chap stick lids
• carved erasers
• the sticky side of carpet tape
• pennys
• seed beads
• the bottom of paintbrushes
• deodorant lids
• pop can bottom
• marker caps
• marker bottoms
• pieces of a dissected floss container 
• yarn wrapped around something
• sharpie 
• balloons

Pre-cut a bunch of cards. Take a piece of paper and pour 80 (or as many as you like) different colors of paint on it to use as a paint palate.  Dip your "stamps" in the paint and form patterns and shapes to make cards.

I used the thing from the floss container and the chap stick cap the most as my stamps and my favorite cards were the last one, the second one and the doodled one.  The flowers on the doodled one were not stamped, they were drawn on a watercolor background.