Revisiting Creating Bubble Prints

Creating Bubble prints is a great outdoor or rainy day activity. We first made these 3 years ago and it continues to be The Chocolate Muffin Tree's most popular post of all time.  It is quite addicting! Here's how to create them:

First you need some water, tempera paint, and dish soap.

Mix about a 1/2 cup of water, 2 Tablespoons of paint, and a few squirts of dish soap in each container. We experimented and added a little more dish soap if needed!  My daughter thought it was fun and enjoyed the mixing part.

Then add a straw to each container and make sure you blow into the mixture. It is like blowing bubbles in your milk or juice. She LOVED this part a lot! It was an excuse to do something that she usually is told not to do.

Once you have a huge bubble foam on the top of the container you are ready to lay a paper on top to print the bubbles. The bubbles will "POP" and create a print.

Here is our best bubble print.... we made lots and lots.

I made the bubble prints into cards. They look so pretty and friends and family members are always amazed with how they were created. This technique would create Great wrapping paper too.

Now back to blowing bubbles and trying to catch them.

Have FUN Exploring Bubbles

What is your favorite bubble activity?

 

 This Post is Linked to:

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CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY
MADE BY LITTLE HANDS MONDAY
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Glitter Liquid Watercolor Dyed Eggs

We love dyeing eggs!  We are joining in on Tinkerlab's Creative Challenge: Eggs.  Our idea is dyeing eggs with Glitter Liquid Watercolors.  We received a fabulous set of these beauties from Discount School Supply. This has got be one of my top favorite products from them. You can check out their website here, if you want to purchase some. Keep reading to find out how we created these Gorgeous dyed eggs!

To create Glitter Liquid Watercolor Dyed Eggs you'll need:

Hardboiled White Eggs

Glitter Liquid Watercolors from Discount School Supply

Eye or Medicine Droppers

muffin tin

Bowls

Coffee filters or paper towels

Newspaper

rack to set eggs on

First, grab some Glitter Liquid Watercolors from Discountschoolsupply.com and put some in containers or a muffin tin. A muffin is a great way to divide up the colors.

Place a couple of coffee filters inside a bowl or some paper towels to soak up the excess watercolors.  Then place the egg or eggs on top of the coffee filter and start dripping glitter watercolors over the eggs. This is truly an engaging process to watch the colors flow over the egg and mix together.

Drip as much color as you want and then place the eggs on a baking rack with paper towels underneath to dry. I love the sparkle of the eggs with the Glitter Liquid Watercolors.  Kids of all ages could easily do this process.

Have FUN!

Check out more cool egg ideas at Tinkerlab.com

Making Origami Paper Boats

We had so much fun making Paper Boats the other weekend.  My daughter then continued to make them all week long.  She tends to find an idea like this and is so proud that she can make it and wants to show off to friends and family.  We got the idea from the book: Curious George Rides a Bikeby H.L. Rey which has the instructions on how to create a paper boat within the story. This activity is great because it ties in reading and art together.

To create a paper boat you'll need:
Origami Paperor thin paper that is easy to fold

Here are the instructions we followed within the book.  It begins with the paper hat.  Here are instructions for the origami paper boat here at: http://www.origami-fun.com/origami-boat.html

We had so much fun with these!

We even did some floating experiments with the origami boats we made too.

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Making Mandalas With Stamps

Do you have lots of pre-made stamps on hand? Well, I have the project for you.  Normally we just stamp on papers without any direction, but recently we came up with the idea of creating mandalas or radial designs with all of our stamps.  They turned out quite beautiful!

To create Mandalas with stamps all you need:

Stamps of all shapes and sizes

Ink Pads

paper in different colors

your imagination

Now,  just start in the middle of the paper and create circles of stamps around your first circle. Basically,  you create a target design of stamps.  Here is a simple stamp mandala.

Get more detailed as you do more.  Try making some stamps closer or further apart. You may even choose to overlap stamps too.

The more stamps and colors the better.

HAVE FUN!

How to Make an Abstract Kandinsky Painting

My daughter was telling me about an art project that she did at school.  She explained a little bit, and right away I guessed she was doing a painting project in the style of abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky. I asked her if she would show me how to create this project.  She was super excited about it and being a former elementary art teacher it excited me too. Keep reading to find out how to create a Gorgeous Kandinsky look-alike painting.

Materials Needed:

white rectangular paper (we used 12x18 white paper)

tempera paint in the primary colors (red, yellow, blue)

brushes/water

mixing tray (we used paper plates)

oil pastels/or chalk

First you fold your paper into 8 sections.  (C told me the teacher did it for her)

Then you start with a dot in the middle of the rectangle spaces and paint around the dot in different colors until you fill up the space.  My daughter told me that the idea was to mix colors with the primary colors.  She absolutely loved the idea of mixing colors just like when we did our Egg Carton Paintings here.

Here are our finished Kandinsky paintings. We added oil pastel over our paintings after they were dry.

Here is Squares and Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky made in 1913. How do you think our paintings compare?

****Our Egg Carton Paintings:http://thechocolatemuffintree.blogspot.com/2012/04/egg-carton-paintings.html

Snow Art Like Simon Beck

I've always admired snow artist Simon Beck ever since I read about him a few years ago.  Whenever the snow falls and leaves a fresh coat of snow he is always on my mind.  Simon Beck creates amazingly intricate snow art by walking with snow shoes and then later photographing his work.  You can read more about him here. (And see his amazing work too!)

We tried our hand at some Snow Art after a recent snowfall.... Mostly using sticks and our fingers.

This was our stomping, which you can't get a great overview shot of, but still cool.  We've created hearts and words by stomping in the snow too.

We also enjoyed creating some tiny snowmen and adding scenery with tree branches.

If there is no snow where you are,  why not try mud or sand art?  Artists use what is around them to create their work.

Deconstruct a Camera

I had forgot we had done this and my daughter reminded me about it recently: "Hey, Mom remember when we took apart the camera?" It is always amazing when your child references back to something you hoped would be a memorable experience.  It was.  A lot of the things that we have done on The Chocolate Muffin Tree have proved that when we do things with our children they remember whether it is reading to them, sitting with them, listening to them, or whatever. We took apart a camera...a broken camera.  It was a very sad day that this Canon Powershot fell into the salty oceans of Maui, but the vacation was fantastic! Once a camera falls into the ocean it will soak up all the salt water and salt does damage,  but the memory card was fine which had all our great memories so at least those were not lost.  As time went on I thought about how it would be cool to deconstruct this camera and see all the parts that made up this Digital camera.

So with the loss of my camera we gained a new experience to put under our belts. Here is the camera before:

We gathered some simple tiny screwdrivers and other tools that might help a long the way. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  I had to recruit my dear husband to help with this process. Be careful if you ever end up doing this because my husband shocked himself when he had to detach the flash reserve....ouch! (just a little shock) The shock was not really painful, just surprising because he didn't see it coming. So with anything you decide to deconstruct....be cautious!  Here are the parts and pieces again.  Amazing to see all the pieces.

Why would you want to do this? Why not?  By taking things apart you are learning about what makes up something. Also, if you are able to put it together (we did not!) you are learning all about construction and how things work.  Ironically, my Fathers favorite thing to do is put things together.  Give him a broken item or something in pieces and he will be so happy.  By doing this, you may be appealing to a whole side of a child you never knew. Happy Deconstructing!