Liquid Watercolor Painting and Exploration

Have you ever tried Liquid Watercolors? Lately we have been painting and exploring with liquid watercolors that Discount School Supply sent us.  Liquid watercolors are one of my "must have supplies" and you should seriously try them if you never have before. They can be used straight from the bottle for the brightest colors or you can dilute them a bit with water.  Regular watercolor paints can be frustrating to young children and liquid watercolors solve this problem by having water already added to the pigment.

For painting and exploring with Liquid Watercolors we used:

Colorations Liquid Watercolors

paint brushes

watercolor paper

80# White Drawing Paper

salt

bubble wrap

At first we just painted with liquid watercolors.

Finished person by C.  Lovely.

For exploration we painted watercolor paper with many splotches of colors.  We tried to keep it wet.

Then we sprinkled ordinary table salt which brought gorgeous results instantly.  We also added pieces of bubble wrap to place on top of wet areas of the painting.  The bubble wrap areas needed to dry a bit to show the impressions underneath.

Here you can see the speckled salt that melted into the painting and the bubble wrap impression on the blue paint on the left.  Breathtaking.

Here is another fantastic painting with salt and bubble wrap.  Experimenting is so fun!

What other ideas for experimenting with liquid watercolors could we try?

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Learning to Ride a Two Wheeler Within Seconds!

How did you learn to ride a bike?  I just recently learned this "no pedal method" of teaching someone to ride a bike and my daughter was so successful at it! She was riding her two wheeler within seconds after putting the pedals back on. I shared this on my facebook page and wanted to definitely share this with everyone on the blog too because it is so amazing!

The method is simple:  Basically you remove the pedals off your child's bike and let them practice gliding on their bike like a scooter.  Make sure to to lower the seat on the bike so that your child can touch the ground with their feet too.  I let my daughter do this for about 3 days.  She gained so much confidence mastering how to balance on her bike first. Then after the 3 days we put the pedals back on and within seconds she was riding!!! (Really) Here is a You Tube Video that explains this method:

Here is C riding with no training wheels and the pedals back on.  The rest is history.  No falling off the bike a million times and pushing behind her....amazing! I admit my daughter has fallen a few times as a new rider and we do practice stopping, but the actual balancing and pedaling came so easily to her with this method.

Interesting enough my Father told me that the first bicycles didn't even have pedals. So this method of learning to ride a bike makes perfect sense.  The reason I share this on the blog is to show that there can always be a different way to do something that people may have been doing the same way for years.   This illustrates creative thinking and that there are many solutions to reach a goal.  Many people embrace this way and others just look at me like I have a third eye as if this method could never work!  Here is a picture I found of the first bicycle (no pedals): source

Have you ever heard of this method of learning to ride a bike?

What other things have you (or your children) learned by doing it a different way? 

A detailed article from Better Homes and Gardens about this same topic: How to Learn to Ride a Bike in 15 Minutes.

Paper Bag Mask Monsters Made From A Vintage Book

I have a "way too big" collection of books about making things.  Recently my daughter was looking through one of my vintage "making things"books and wanted to create these paper bag monsters.  She actually really had a lot of fun making these (and so did I).  It just goes to show you that even old books have some great ideas.

This is my daughter C's mask.

Here is my mask creation.

Here is the book that this idea came from.  It is dated 1974.  When I researched further it is said to be Volume 9 of Worldbook's Childcraft Encyclopedia of awesome things.  I'm sure we'll be making more things from this book.

What some of your favorite books about making things?

(vintage or not)

Other Projects that we have made with Paper Bags:

Paper Bag Puppets Inspired by Fandango

Paper Bag Self Portraits

Paper Bag Puffy Heart

Egg Carton Paintings

We are up again for TinkerLab's Challenge.  This time the challenge was to create something with egg cartons.  We were inspired by this, this, and this to paint on egg cartons! C really enjoyed painting on egg cartons and it is a great alternative to painting on plain paper.  I love how these paintings turned out.

Materials Needed:

tempera paint or acrylic paint

paint brushes

egg carton(s) that are paper/cardboard kind

The materials are so simple and everyone should have the ability to create these wonderful paintings.  I did cut 2 egg cartons apart so that my daughter could just paint on the inside of the egg sections.  You could paint to on the top of the egg carton and inside too.  In advance I glued the 2 inside sections to a piece of cardboard so that they would be more stable.

Then we just began painting.  I used a styrofoam egg carton to use as a paint tray while painting the cardboard egg cartons.

I was astonished at how much C enjoyed painting the egg cartons.  We painted the cartons solid first and then added black polka dots.

Beautiful!

C loved this so much she asked to paint on egg cartons again.  It was a good thing that I had quite  collection saved of egg cartons.  On this painting my daughter explored mixing colors and using white to create "tints" or lighter versions of each color. Tints are created by adding white to a color.

Here are both paintings which are proudly being displayed in my daughter's bedroom right now.

Be sure to check out all the other FABULOUS egg carton ideas at Tinkerlab.

How to Draw a Bunny by C

I Love Bunnies.  It was my favorite animal to draw as a child. Whenever I had to draw something that was my choice it was a bunny about nine times out of ten.  My daughter "C" has been drawing bunnies since the Easter season is upon us or maybe she is following in my foot steps? She wanted to teach me how to draw a bunny and I told her I could post it on The Chocolate Muffin Tree for all the world to see.  Here is the bunny that she showed me how to draw.

Take it away C:

C: For this drawing, all you need is paper, a pen, and pink marker.  First you draw an oval like this.

C: Then, you draw a circle for the head and add the ears.

C:  Now draw the eyes, nose, mouth, and whiskers.  Then color the nose and ears pink.

C:  Last,  add some lines for fur and a tail.  Make a line around the bunny to create a cave.  Draw eggs and carrots under the bunny.  Now you are done.

Me: Here is my bunny drawing after the instructions from my daughter.  What do you think?  I enjoyed having my daughter teach me to draw a bunny.  She was extremely proud!

Do you let your children teach you how to make things?

Hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family! Take care.

Happy Easter!