art ideas

[~*heket*~]

My daughter loves drawing frogs, lizards, bugs etc.

She loves making "stuff" out of the recycling, and using it with toys.

She's currently completing a rather complex paint by numbers thing that's an underwater scene with sharks and colourful fish.

This week I'm going to give her the camera and let her take photos. We might go to the botanic gardens or somewhere interesting.

What are some ideas for arty stuff?

[Ceres]

My little one is only 4 so his art skills are slightly less complex! He does love drawing and painting, the current fave is putting blobs of paint on the page and then folding it to make symmetrical patterns. If you're into craft it's always nice to collect leaves and feathers and things like that for a collage or mobile.

[~*heket*~]

that's a nice idea with the leaves! Do they keep their colour?

[Ayla]

You know, I have a family full of artists (my grandmother, father, uncle & cousin) and yet I always come up blank when it comes to arty stuff :lol

[~*heket*~]

:lol I come from a family of musicians and ... hey I can clap in time with the music! :imateapot

[Ayla]

:lol

[Sarasvati]

:lol

Kira likes to paint, fingerpainting herself is always a winner. Imogen has started to scribble with crayons, but Kira likes to draw stuff. We have't done much though other than painting and drawing, should probably rectify that!

[~*heket*~]

Spikee likes drawing - or scribbling ;) He even tried pasting once and didnt mind that, but after two goes it all got a bit too exciting and we had to end the session iykwim :lol Now his idea of a good time is putting stickers on paper. I buy him a $1 sheet of stickes and off he goes - LOVELY!!!!

[Beatrice]

I got slightly creative with solstice craft a few weeks back and we did spatter painting, which was soooo much fun.

I get my big kids a joint Chrissy present of a hamper with their art/craft supplies in for the year. This year I splurged thanks to Mr Rudd :lol B is really enjoying having pastels and graphite pencils to play around with, she'd rather outgrown textas and was looking for a challenge.

I found a link to an awesome kids' craft blog the other day, The Crafty Crow (http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/). There's also an Australian one, Kiddley (http://kiddley.com/), which hasn't been active for a while but has fabulous archives.

[~*heket*~]

Ohhhh! I'll have a look at them later ... right now I'm trying to drag myself away from the puter:lol

[Beatrice]

Last week my girls wanted to do some craft and H wanted to "help", so I put him up on his highchair and gave him some gloop to play with - cornflour, water and a little bit of paint. He started out with a bit of paper and then threw it off the tray and just smeared the gloop all over himself and everything he could reach. Kept him occupied for half an hour, and dries to powder which can be wiped down really easily :lol

[Zalkira]

I just found the old NMAA kids cookbook at the oppy! Fabulous - it has recipies for poster paint and everythign in there. We did the 'decoration dough' yesterday:

1 cup salt, 3.5 c flour, 1.5 c water. mix, knead, roll to 1 cm thick and shape.

put in 150 deg oven for 2 hours and then paint and varnish.

We did star cutouts yesterday with holes in them - Z will paint them and we will thread them to maek necklaces - probably for a treasure hunt at her b'day.

I am going to do some in circles - do textures on one side and material on the other and make a memory game.

If you want to buy a good book with ideas - winterwood toys have one 'knitting for children' for 8+ i'd say - great patterns of toys.

google felt balls - that is another good one - easy and lovely natural materials.

[Ceres]

I bought some cheap mounted canvases from officeworks and DS has been painting up a storm on them. I think they will make excellent birthday and christmas presents!

[Zalkira]

http://kidscraftweekly.com/chinese_new_year_issue.html

I subscribe to this craft newsletter to get ideas

[Anarcostar]

Oh wow, some excellent links! Thank you everyone! this is realy exciting :eager

[Ceres]

Bumping this to remind myself of some ideas. The current facination this week is making books. I was filing away some of his artwork the other day and I found a ton of painty handprints from last year. I laminated some of them for the grandparents as parents which they really loved too.

[Sarasvati]

Oh shit ceres that's a great idea!