Car Painting

We tried something different this time. Car painting. I spread some paint on kraft paper and gave them some little cars. They moved the cookie sheet around and let the cars go at it. David thought that was pretty hilarious :) They also just moved the cars around. Simple but fun painting time!  


They are using Joe's old t-shirts while listening to the Toddler Radio station from Pandora. Isn't Pandora awesome? I LOVE IT! I think I'm addicted :)


Anyway, here goes...

It's dried up and probably ready to be hung along their others paintings.


Have a great week everyone! 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Painting

The morning before yesterday I took a break from cleaning, painting and organizing the house. D and I usually play and spend some good time together, but I have been so into the house that this morning, I looked at David roaming around the house playing by himself that I felt so bad. I was so focused on making my kitchen look nice for Sunday, that I put my baby on hold. 

I stopped what I was doing, washed my hands, and he and I went to get some modeling clay to play with. I thought maybe we could recreate a scene from a book, and he chose The Very Hungry Caterpillar -Spanish version. One of his favorites.

He sat on the kitchen table, and we began to work with the clay. I showed him how to do little balls and sticks, and little things like that. Then I put the book in front of him, and guided him into recreating a page of the book.

One the second picture, the green parts are the caterpillar and the red one is an apple :)

And on the next set, on the very first picture on the left, he used the straw to make the body of the butterfly. He is so smart! He also thought it was better to "feed" the caterpillar, so he piled up the modeling clay against the book. He makes me smile.

Sometimes, what we think is more important is not. To me he is the most important. Not the cabinets nor the drawers. But sometimes, there are things we cannot avoid, and we have to learn how to manage everything without feeling guilty. I felt guilty this morning...but never lost sight of what is most valuable in my life.

I'll do my best to leave the house presentable, but I will also not leave my kids on hold. Painting and cleaning can wait...

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On another note, I got the boys' painting we were working on, up on the wall. It looks really nice. 

Remember I said I wanted to keep working on it? Well, we did, and I actually gave them some foam to work with. They thought that was interesting.

It was finished last week, but I didn't have the frame. And when I got that frame I told you about, all it took me was to spray paint it and hang it.

 

 

Ta da!  

 

(You can probably see a little bit of the window blinds reflection)

 Don't you L O V E  it ?!

I do.

They are my Picasso.

 Now, that's what I call art! 

Have a great weekend...

Crayola Art

I am a fan and lover of Pinterest. I love to seat and browse around looking at all the different pictures that are there. Many of our blog pictures have come from that site -what a neat idea to be able to pin your favorite images!

Anyway, one of the blogs I read often, put this project up and let us all know that the idea came from Pinterest. Why I have not seen them before? I don't know but I went back and looked at all the different kinds that people have created, and of course I had to try to make one with the boys. Here we go...

Material:

-Canvas (we used a 9x11)

-Crayons

-Hot glue

-Blow drier

Glue the crayons to the canvas, turn the blow drier in hot and low and begin to work over the crayons. 

The boys helped out too. They would get tired sometimes and they would go to play and then they would come back to work on it some more.

The crayons took a little while to begin to melt, and I think it was the fact that they were the off-brand kind, not the actual Crayola brand. They started to melt but it was sort of gooey, at first I was disappointed but towards the end I liked it. It has lots of texture and layers. The boys loved it and thought it was soooo cool ! 

What do you think? I also like how in the right bottom corner there are some splashy parts -as you can see on the picture. 

I like our end result. It is a fun, playful, happy, gooey rain of color :)

Now, I have to clean my hair drier because look how it ended...ha! 

Have a fun weekend!

Now with Kraft Paper

We have a bunch of paper at home, but I thought it would be a neat idea to get a kraft paper roll, and let the boys paint away. We are gonna work it out in layers and see how it turns out. I want them to create a big painting and eventually frame it.

This is what we did the other day, and notice how we begin out in the open, and move into the shadow- hot hot day! Specially when the sun was shinning.

It dries really quickly and I love that. It has been way too hot and the boys get really thirsty and tired so we'll see when we finish. I think it is almost done. I'll show you all the end result :) 

Keep checking back!

Artful Parent

The lady who runs this blog is simply amazing! 

She is a huge inspiration to me and to many other parents who are curious about arts and crafts. I thought I would share this, because she comes up with the neatest ideas. She keeps everything simple -something I like- specially when you are dealing with toddlers. 

Her blog has been on my bookmark menu since my last semester of collage. How did I get to this blog? I don't even remember, I think it was through another blog. Who knows, it's been a while. Anyway, she provides great information about material, paints, and projects, among other things. 

I'll share with you some of my favorite "art/crafts for kids" blogs:

artfulparent.typepad.com/artfulparent

pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com

artprojectsforkids.org

www.artistshelpingchildren.org

belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow

teachkidsart.blogspot.com

artlessonsforkids.wordpress.com

These are just a few of what I usually read. Many of them have a list of their own favorite blogs, so make sure you look them up. 

One last thing, I need to make myself to try a lot of the projects shown on those blogs. Sometimes, if I don't have the stuff to do them with, I just don't do it. We are truly running out of room in our house to go and buy more things and then don't have anywhere to put it. It is specially not good when you are trying to sell your house. But I will definitely give a shot to the small/less messy projects for sure...

Thanks Crayola for washable paints!

Many times I've tried to do crafts with the boys, but I am the one who ends up doing the whole project-almost always. I've found out that painting and coloring is the easiest and less complicated thing to do and better yet,  they love it! 

 

 

They get to choose the colors they want to use. One boys chooses one color and the other chooses another one.( Disregard the acrylics on the left, I was the one using those)

I recently bought them some brushes with a bigger handle (like the ones in the pictures) and so far they are a lot easier for their little hands, but they still like to use the thinner ones every once in a while. Specially if they see them.

I want to cultivate art in them. My dad is an artist by nature, and even though he does not practice that much, he is really talented. I personally believe that I inherited that gift. I love colors and paints, museums, and have a good eye for painting and drawing. My art professor at the university told me I needed to take some more art classes to keep learning and cultivating my talent. Gosh, I fell really good when he said that, because I personally though my paintings sucked! And some of them did, I don't lie. That's why I can't wait to have a space on my own to leave everything out and paint anytime.

Kids Art Gallery Wall

I finally finished the Kids Art Gallery Wall!

I've been collecting artwork to put in the wall and after weeks of deliberation I chose the ones that were going in the wall. I may swap their artworks every once in a while for a change. 

Here it is,

The gallery wall is in our guest room/playroom -former baby nursery-, and since we had bare walls across the entire room I thought this was the perfect room to do it and also add a pop of color. Pictures of the boys while painting and coloring were combined with their paintings. What do you think? 

I really like how it turned out, and it actually looks a lot better in person :) The days have been cloudy so there was not enough of natural light shinning through the windows

 

One more thing checked off my list!

FYI, I've been working on the other gallery wall and it's actually pretty much finished. The only thing is, I have not been able to find the right mats for the last two frames, and that is the only thing that is holding me back from showing it. Wish me luck finding them! 

Invite making

Hey guys!

I've been into crafting a lot lately and for Anthony's party I wanted to create the invites myself, so after he let me know what he wanted for his party this was my inspiration for the invites- a knight shield that Santa brought him.

What I did first was to draw the picture into a piece of paper of the size I wanted the invites to be. The one of the left was my first try, then it finished like the one on the right.

After I had the picture on paper,  I copied the shapes into the color paper I wanted to use -I used card-stock paper. Anthony helped by the way :)

Once I had all of them I put them together and glue each piece with all purpose glue and a paint brush. Typed and printed the info on the other side.

Ta-da!

This is how they turned out :)

I liked the finished product, but mostly I liked that Anthony was very involved in the whole process, he really was :)

Painting day

By being at home with the boys full time, it is a little bit difficult to find what to do to keep them entertained, specially because they both are at a different age. We play, read, color, paint, watch movies etc etc. I do try to keep them away from the T.V as much as possible, because I believe kids have a huge potential in their little superhuman genius brains that if they watch too much T.V most of that potential will not be developed like it should, yet it is difficult. 

Lately, I've been doing my best to do a lot more extra activities where we can bond, and they can also learn or just simply enjoy the moment, do something different, new and exciting. Today was painting day, it happened at different times because while David napped, Anthony painted, and vice versa.

Notice how I had to cover the painting area a lot more than what I did with Anthony?

Yes, David was a lot messier...

Ok, so in this one, I was actually was going to take a picture of him painting, when suddenly and quickly, very quickly!, he decided to taste the paint. He did not like it! 

 

 I really like all the pictures even though some are blurry. I had taken most of them with the phone because first, I could not find the camera, second, it wasn't fully charged. Lesson learned!  The good thing is that we are going to have a lot more days like this :)

Have a lovely weekend!

P.S. The paint we use is Crayola Washable Kids Paint 10 ct.