Smoosh painting for Earth Day… Smoosh painting is a technique that’s great for kids of all ages. The way the colours blend and swirl together is fascinating, making it perfect for today’s Earth Day craft. If you’ve never done any … Continue reading
I’m so excited to share today’s recycled art project that I’m practically busting to get this post written!
As you may know, yesterday we took a rather hideous painting that I found in a second-hand shop, and turned it into a stunning hand-painted, hooligan original. You can read all about it here in my recycled painting post.
Well, if you were impressed with yesterday’s recycled art project, hold on to your hat because what we made today may just be the coolest thing we’ve ever created!
This was a poster that we’d had mounted on a piece of pressboard, and it had hung in my son’s bedroom for years. His tastes have changed, and he’d taken it down, and I’d been meaning to donate it to Value Village when it occurred to me that the hooligans could create a painting of their own on it.
It took me a couple of months to think of something cool to do with it, but I’m tellin’ you, it was worth the wait! The smooth surface of the pressboard was perfect for this!
A few days ago, I rolled a coat of primer over the picture. I’m not sure if that step was even necessary, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
Today I mixed up some powdered black tempera paint, and the hooligans rolled it over the entire surface of the picture.
It only took a few minutes to dry because I gave it a blast with the hair dryer. (an old hair dryer in the craft room is handy for speeding up the drying process sometimes)
OH! If you’re wondering about the adorable aprons that the hooligans wear when we’re gettin’ messy, I make them from the legs of worn out jeans. You can get the tutorial for my repurposed denim aprons here!
Next, I swirled six circles of acrylic craft paint onto the picture: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. I actually used several shades of each paint because we we’d be using a smooshing technique which is a great way for kids to experiment with colour mixing. I topped off each coloured circle with a swirl of white acrylic craft paint.
Then I lightly covered the whole thing with 3 overlapping pieces of cling-wrap, and handed it back over to the hooligans, and they smooshed the whole thing. When we’ve done smooshing in the past (you can see our Fall Collages here) we’ve really rubbed and smeared the cling wrap around, but today I had the hooligans press down and pat the cling wrap, so the circles wouldn’t get too mixed up with each other. 
And now for the big reveal…
Is this not GORGEOUS?
Another collaborative work of art for playroom!
I wouldn’t hesitate to hang this on our main floor if it wasn’t already spoken for in the playroom. The only thing I would change if I were making it for our family’s living space is is that I would use acrylic paint for the black base instead of the black tempera paint that we used today. An acrylic base would be more durable, and I’d be able to apply a coat of matte varnish over it to seal it and give it a bit of a sheen.
As far as playroom art goes though, I think this piece rocks!
Well, here we are, on the eve of all Hallow’s Eve. We did our final Hallowe’en project today because the Hooligans won’t be here tomorrow.
I’d had this project in the back of my mind for weeks, and I’m really glad we got around to it today. It was very cool! And like most of our projects, it was inexpensive, and easy enough for even the youngest Hooligans to have fun with.
You’ll need:
Start by drizzling your paint on your canvas; pumpkin colours on the main part of the page and a small drizzle of green at the top for the stem of the pumpkin.
Now place your plastic bag on top of your canvas and start smooshing, patting and rubbing the paint all around.
Smoosh it well. You want good coverage here.
Lift up your plastic bag and voila!
If you’re not happy with your coverage, place the bag back down and smoosh again.
We used a hair dryer to dry our pumpkins so we could get to the stamping.
I made a few stamps for eyes, noses and mouths by cutting some foam packaging and hot gluing the pieces to a few small containers (yogurt containers are great for this).
I also pulled out a few wooden blocks from our block bucket so the Hooligan’s would have a variety of shapes to choose from.
They dipped their stamps in some black paint and turned their pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns.
Some chose to be quite deliberate in how they stamped, and some were more creative. This little Hooligans rubbed and smeared her stamps around creating a beautiful collage.
As a final touch, we added “teeth”. I set out corn kernels, borrowed from our corn bin, and white pasta leftover from our “boneyard wreath” project.
How cute is THIS?!
Aren’t they fabulous? I love that each one is so unique and beautiful!
HAPPY HALLOWE’EN!!
I can’t believe October is coming to an end already! We still have so much Hallowe’en crafting to do! We were smooshing pumpkins today, using the same paint smooshing technique that we used for our Fall Collages.
To start, I used an oval platter to trace a pumpkin shape onto cardboard. Then we drizzled orange/rust/peach and green paint onto the oval, and covered it with waxed paper.
When we made our fall collages, we used Plastic Wrap, but I wanted to try waxed paper this time. Honestly, I had dollar store waxed paper, and it started ripping soon after we got started, so we peeled it off and went with plastic wrap again. Much better.
Once the pumpkin was good and smooshed, we used some paper towel to blot up the excess paint. img_2520.jpg
I just love this smooshing technique! It produces really beautiful results!
The Hooligans had a play in the yard with Andrew, who had a P.A. Day today, while the paint dried.
He was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin; wherever he went, they followed.
When they were dry, I cut out the pumpkin shape I’d traced, and we got to work on the faces. You could use construction paper for this, but I had some scraps of skate-board grip tape that I wanted to use. It’s like a coarse sandpaper, so the texture is neat, and bonus: it has a sticky back, so the Hooligans peeled off the paper backing and just stuck the eyes, noses and mouths on their pumpkins.
Ta-da….
