Experimenting with textured paint and patterned paper

I woke up this morning and decided that my blog needed a new look. So I fiddled with that and ended up replacing the green backdrop for a plainer white. Then the kids and I experimented with paint textures, colours and patterned paper. I really like the mix of colours and textures the kids came up with, and best of all we had a great deal of fun experimenting and getting messy.

First we squeezed some paint into our egg cartons and took some time to make different shades of colours. Alex liked the dark blue and dark red where as Jasmine preferred the lighter shades such as pale yellow. See some pictures below showing how we used the sponges, cloths and toothbrushes to create a lively background. We set aside the paintings to dry and then traced some animal shapes and hearts onto patterned scrapbooking paper with the aim of glueing these onto our paintings.

The paint dried very quicky being such a warm and sunny day. So, after lunch we poured clear craft glue into a cup and used a paint brush to smear glue onto our paper cut outs. Jasmine helped choose the layout for each painting and stick them on. We were pleased with the end result and stuck them in our playroom.

See below for a list of materials:

• acrylic paint
• sponge
• toothbrush
• kitchen cloth
• paint palette or egg carton
• A3 or similar sized paper
• scrapbook patterned paper or coloured paper sheets
• paintbrush to apply glue if needed.
• stencils, pencil, scissors and glue.

Here are the stencils we traced around by the way.