Printed Igloos

My daughter and I made really "cool" igloos by painting a piece of bubble wrap and making a print. I got the idea from Crafty Kids at Home. You want to have your paper ready before you paint. We used blue cardstock with a strip of white on the bottom for snow. Then draw a simple igloo shape on the smooth side of bubble wrap and cut it out. Have your child paint the bubble side with white paint. We used a sponge brush.

Quickly flip the bubble wrap over onto the paper before the paint starts to dry. Press down gently without moving the bubble wrap around.

Then carefully peel off the bubble wrap. We also made snowflakes with a Q-tip dipped in white paint. And to finish it off, we added a snowman sticker!

I traced around the igloo with a white crayon just to define it more. I also liked how it looked without painting the bubble wrap. You could just glue it on your paper and the glue would dry clear.

But the painted print does stand out more.

Make sure you check your bubble wrap for popped bubbles. Sometimes a whole row will be flat and won't leave a good print. Have fun adding all kinds of things to the scene!

Paper Towel Suncatchers

I recently bought paper towels with Frozen characters on them. I thought my daughter would like to paint them. We had Anna, Elsa and Olaf.

I decided to trace Anna and Olaf with a black Sharpie to make it easier for my 3-year-old, but I left Elsa alone because I was curious which would look better.

I experimented with a couple different paints to see what worked best. I had regular watercolors and glitter acrylic paint which I received from CraftProjectIdeas.com. We started with Olaf.

The watercolors were brighter, but they needed a lot of water. We kept having to dip the brush in water in order to get the paint to spread. The glitter paints were easier to work with, but often quite pale so we needed a lot. When she was done painting, I thought it would look neat hanging in a window with the sun shining in.

By the time we got around to painting Anna and Elsa, my daughter had enough so she only painted a few parts and I finished them.

I like how the white acrylic paint actually shows up!
And as always, it's so hard to get a good picture of a suncatcher, but they really are pretty in the window.

 If you don't have prints on your paper towels, you could always draw your own design with a Sharpie!