Party Season

It seems to be party season - every weekend at the moment I'm taking my elder son to birthday parties.  Over the last few weeks he's been to a Karting Party, a Tubing Party (i.e sledging - looked like great fun to me) an exotic animals party (where he got to handle snakes, tarantulas, giant frogs, etc) and a Football Party.  At least he would have gone to a football party, except silly mummy got the date wrong and turned up the day after.  My poor son was gutted, he'd been looking forward to it so much, and I felt so guilty.

Last weekend I took him to a party where they had introduced a very simple idea that I rather liked.  In some ways it is rather similar to the idea used at some weddings where a large sheet of paper is provided for the wedding guests to sign, write messages, draw pictures or whatever.  On this occasion it was a large sheet of paper stuck to the wall,  for the 5 & 6 year old guests to draw upon, with the crayons supplied.  I thought it made a lovely keepsake for the future, especially since so many people move now and children’s friends change so quickly.  Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera, or even my phone with me, so can’t show you what it looked like, but I’m sure you get the general idea!


New Artful Kids Flickr Group 

I'm in the process at the moment of trying to customise my blog, so you may see some changes taking place over the next few weeks.  I have lots of things I'd like to do, but it's still very much a learning process at the moment.  Anyway, as part of this whole process I have set up an Artful Kids group on Flickr for people to contribute photos of their children's artwork to.  I'm limiting it to paintings or drawings, by children under the age of 12, and I've set it up so that you have to 'apply' to join, simply so that I'm hopefully less likely to get photos of goodness knows what added to it that way.  The plan is to choose one to feature on Artful Adventures each week, or each month (depends really on how many people contribute to it).  So if your child has just produced a masterpiece, then why not 'exhibit' it by adding it to the group and sharing it with us all, and maybe I'll choose it to feature.  The address is:  
http://www.flickr.com/groups/artfulkids/

Hand and Footprint Poems

This week I thought I would share some poems to accompany children's hand and foot prints for gift and display purposes.  You may have come across them before - I first saw them when my son came home from his first term at school with one printed next to his handprint, which had then been laminated and had a calendar attached to the bottom.  I researched them further as I thought they looked perfect added to a child's photo and handprint, and it seems there are a whole lot of variations on a theme.  I've included a couple here, but many more can be found at the links given below: 

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small

And always leave my fingerprints

On furniture and walls.

But everyday I'm growing
I'll be grown up someday,
And all these little fingerprints

Will simply fade away

So here's a special handprint

Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked

When I was very small

Find more hand & footprint poems at:

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/dad/mhandprintalt.html

http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems28.html

Kids Mats-erpieces!

I came across a brilliant new product the other day, which really excited me with its possibilities, only to discover that it's not yet available in Europe, (as with lots of these things, it originates in the US).  Basically it's whiteboard paint which enables you to paint a whole wall and use it as a canvas or noticeboard - something you can't really do with blackboard paint without making the whole room dark.  It's available in two different kinds from ideapaint.com - professional (which takes a week to 'cure' once applied, and is solvent based, so is not really appropriate for a home environment) which is available here now, and the water-based CR8 paint, which isn't.  I am so frustrated!  Hopefully it will become available in the not too distant future, as there are quite a few places I can think of using it, aside from the obvious kids bedrooms.

Mats-erpieces

OK so I know the title is really corny, but this week I thought I'd introduce another really simple, but useful way of using kids artwork to create laminated place mats or work mats.  I should perhaps point out here that these are more for creating a wipe clean surface to contain mess, rather than for protecting from heat!

The very simplest idea, if you have an A3 or A4 piece of artwork, is simply to laminate it as it is.  But if the original artwork is a non-standard size, then mounting it onto a sheet of coloured paper or card, will give you the correct dimensions, and add further creative potential. Using a thin card base results in a stiffer mat.  The background can act as a frame for the artwork, or you could also experiment with patterned backgrounds such as those created by bubble prints or marbling (if you have any of those) or even commercially available papers if you don't.

This is also quite a good way of using collage work, as long as it is flat enough to go through a laminator.  Sequins, tissue paper, glitter, leaves etc. can all be used.  For example you could easily create an autumn themed mat in this way

As well as artwork, you can also include handprints, or photos, or add your child's 'signature' - all of these things help to personalise the finished mat.

Instead of using a single artwork for a mat, you could create a composite image from different elements or motifs cut from several different artworks, as I did with this one.  Alternatively you could crop a larger painting and create your own decorative frame, to create a mat full of 'bling' like this one.

 And finally....

I saw this ad in the Financial Times this weekend - it was advertising their regular Mrs Moneypenny feature, ('10 years of our ultra straight-talking mother and businesswoman') but it just amused me, so I thought I'd share it.  The quality of the image isn't great, but hopefully you can read it!