Collage

(Goblin is 27 months)

Today Goblin and I made something really pretty which is quite amazing considering how full of snot we both are. We did also watch 4 hours of TV - so this kinda balances out my guilt.

Goblin really likes playing with the craft scissors Hublet bought for me. I saved a flower seed catalogue that came through the door the other day, and I ripped out some of the pages for Goblin to cut up. I discovered he's good at making the first cut but finds it quite difficult to move into the page with the scissors, so I cut strips so he could do single snips along them.

He did a pretty good job, and I finished it off round the edges making sure every last bit of canvas was covered. Then I left it to dry.  When we had quite a lot of pieces of flowery paper I got one of my bargain basement canvases and some PVA glue. Goblin set to work glueing the paper onto the canvas.

Meanwhile I searched google images for a good silhouette of a tree. You can draw one free hand but I am lazy so I usually go for the path of least resistance.  I think this collage idea would also work really well with a silhouette of a butterfly or fairy, and if you have more patience than me you could do something finer. 

 I printed out my silhouette and stuck it onto a piece of plastic (I used an old laminate printable). Then I cut the silhouette out (so the plastic was also cut). Then I used a gluestick to glue the plastic onto the magazine. Glue sticks are pretty useless glue so I was confident it would peel off afterwards without ripping the collage. However if you are a crafter and happen to have some spray mount to hand, that would probably be a better bet.

I then painted over the whole thing with white acrylic paint (I put a tiny bit of blue in the paint as well). I did try a layer of poster paint but it wasn't thick enough to go over the magazine so I would have had to do loads of layers. If your child is a bit older than Goblin (or your silhouette less detailed) you could probably let them do the painting bit themselves, but Goblin is a bit 'eager' and I was worried he'd dislodge the silhouette.

Once I'd painted the whole canvas (including the sides where some of the magazine had wrapped round) I peeled off the silhouette. Then I used a few cotton buds (Q tips) to remove some of the paint that had seeped under the thinner branches.

And hey presto, a really lovely painting. Its still a bit shiny in the photo because it hasn't dried yet - I was too excited to wait. Not bad for a 2 year old huh!
Now I wish I could claim I came up with this idea up on my own, but I didn't. I found a beautiful picture on Pinterest and traced it back to a guest post on the blog Tatertots and Jello.

I'm linking this to