Christmas Projects and Watercolor Techniques

watercolor and alcohol painting

One last post for this year! I had a lot of fun with some older kids during a Saturday Christmas workshop and here is what we did.....

1. We did the big kid version of a winter painting on wood...

2. We created a really cute set of wooden Santas!!....
Prepping was not so simple, but the process for the kids was very easy as you can see.

So cute!

3. We then moved on to some watercolor techniques. First we learned how to use wet paint on wet paper to get really fun washes and movement with the paint. We used our work as the backdrop for a nativity silhouette.

student work

student work, I am hoping to get a photo of the final product from mom... 

an example from online since I somehow did not end up with an image of a finished piece..

4. Finally, we did one of my favorite watercolor techniques. We used the wet on wet technique on watercolor paper and then added drops of isopropyl alcohol to the surface! It is so much fun, it is sort of addictive. We used these small papers to make card fronts.

Some of my experiments

Student work

Student work

Preschool - Christmas workshop

Merry Christmas!

We just finished up our preschool Christmas workshop today. We had 2 one hour classes and completed FIVE projects! Here is the scoop...

1. SNOWMAN FINGERS

I cut wood into 4x6" pieces and had the kids start by painting a blue and white background. I love that I gave them 2 shades of blue plus white paint and some mixed it all and had a solid background of blue, while others were more painterly using each color more independently on the board.

When the background was dried we painted our fingers and some of our palms white and printed them on the background.

Finally we used permanent markers and paint to detail our snowmen!

2.  SANTA HAND ornaments

The kids pressed their hand prints into some salt dough and we made a hole at the top for hanging. After letting them air dry for several hours I baked them in the oven for a few more hours at about 220 degrees.

Today we painted them, creating a cute Santa face to hang on the tree

3.  SNOWMAN MAGNET CLIPS

I glued popsicle sticks to some clothes pins and had the kids paint them white. Next we added a paper hat and a felt scarf. Finally, the kids drew on faces with permanent markers. These are so cute on the fridge or on a metal door to clip all those Christmas cards up for everyone to enjoy!

4. BUBBLE PRINT Christmas Trees

Bubble printing is so much fun. Just add some tempera paint to water and dish soap. Add a straw and every kids fantasy of blowing bubbles in their milk gets to come true! Add to that that we get to capture the bubbles on paper to make prints and it really can't get any better!

As you can see all the little people had tremendous fun blowing the bubbles and printing them. We cut them into triangles and mounted them on black paper. Finally, we used red and white paint on our fingertips to paint ornaments on and then a touch of yellow at the top for the star. 

Super fun, Super cute, and Super easy! *just remember not to suck in! :-)

5. THANK YOU CARDS

One thing you definitely need at Christmas time are thank you cards for all the wonderful service and gifts friends and family offer.

For this we used blue bubble prints that we created along side our green ones. We simply cute them to size and glued them to a card stock blank card. Voila, now we are ready to be grateful.

I think another beautiful addition to these cards would be a silhouette of the Nativity. Perhaps with older children.

Art Party!

Art Party

mixed media on canvas by the birthday girl

Welcome to my very first Art Party!

This past weekend I had the privilege of hosting a birthday party for a sweet 8 year old girl and 12 of her friends! I led them in an art class with two projects and then Mom and Dad provided lunch and, of course, cake!

For our first project we did a mixed media canvas. We started by painting a background in acrylics.

When the paint was dry we did some collage work.

Some of the kids used ink on top of the collage as well!

The Results!

In between drying times we worked on some faux Batik. You can see the full directions on how to do this here. I think the results were amazing! Check them out...

This was so much fun! I would love to host your art party. Contact me at artwithaubrey@gmail.com for more information on prices and booking.