Crafting with the Kids

Thank you for all your comments on my post for Mother's Day! I should have mentioned in that post that my mother passed away five years ago, but I still like to wish her a Happy Mother's Day as well. She will forever be in my heart, and it was so kind of some of you to say she looked nice. She was about 82 in the photo, and it was one of the last spring times that she was able to spend at their country property before she and my dad moved into town a couple of years later.

I myself had a wonderful day yesterday, although it is never celebrated as "Mother's Day" here. I guess I've had a few words to say about this to my family in the past, and my very sweet 18 year old son gave me this lovely ink print of a loon for Mother's Day. He knows loons are very special to me.

He had picked it up at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in Toronto during a school field trip last week. He often is the only one who recognizes the day for me with a card or a gift, which I very much appreciate. My husband and I went for another short walk through Thickson Wood in the morning, and then we took a sandwich down to the lake and sat watching the waterbirds as we ate our lunch. This is often how we spend a nice weekend, but even so, it was a nice day.

Last week I assisted my daycare kids in making a gift for their own mothers. This idea is all over Pinterest, and I was happy for the inspiration!

We used some pre-framed canvas from the dollar store (such a great price compared to the big craft store chain here). These frames are I believe 11 x 15 (can't quite remember now). I used really wide masking tape to tape the letters "L" and "E" directly onto the canvas. To make them a little more rough and juvenile looking, I carefully ripped a thin strip off all the edges of the tape. I got it started by snipping in a little bit on the edges. I think it looked much better than perfectly straight lines. 

We took these outdoors and with small paint sponges I let the kids paint the canvas with just a few colours. We set them aside to dry in the sun for a bit (I used acrylic paints, so they dry in about 10 minutes in the sun). Then the "fun part" came (ugh!!) with painting their very ticklish little feet and hands and getting the imprint on top of the painted canvas. I used white paint to get it to match the letters. I found after the first attempt that it is best to load the paint quite heavily on the child's hand or foot to get a thick coverage stamped on the painting. I also had a bucket of warm water, a soft cloth and a towel ready to get those painted hands and feet cleaned right away before they got paint everywhere! It went fairly well, but there were a lot of orders being issued by me to prevent painting disaster. These kids are both two years old and extremely energetic! Once it had all dried again, I carefully peeled up the masking tape to reveal the white letters. I haven't heard yet if they were a success with the mom's, but I personally would have loved to have a set of these with my kids' little hands and feet! My son now has a size 11 shoe, so I'm not sure how cute that would look anymore ;)

Enjoy your day folks

and thanks for stopping by!

Wendy