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.

10 Different Egg Activities and Experiments from Tinkerlab and The Chocolate Muffin Tree

Last week Tinkerlab and I hosted a week of Egg Experiments and Activities called Egg Week.  For your convenience I have put all 10 of our ideas in one post.  All the activities use "Real" Eggs so be prepared to do some egg shopping soon. We had a lot of enjoyment with these activities and until now I never realized there were so many things you could do with eggs!  "CLICK" the caption below the photo to bring you to the post.

1. Bleeding Tissue Easter Eggs

2. Walking On Raw Eggs

3. Transparent and Bouncy Egg Experiment

4. Make Your Own Egg Tempera Paint

5. Hot Eggs Decorated With Crayons

6. Three Easy Tricks For Blown Out Eggs

7. An Experiment With Egg and Soda

8. Egg Geodes

9. Naturally Decorated Marbled Eggs

10. Vegetable-Dyed Easter Eggs

What ideas will you try?

Please share any activities you do with eggs.

Paper Bag Self Portrait

If you follow me on facebook I mentioned we've been creating with paper bags for TinkerLab's Creative Challenge and now we have far too many ideas and we need to start sharing now!  For this activity I presented C with a bunch of supplies: paint bingo markers, pom poms, construction paper, stickers, scissors, markers, and more! And, of course, some paper grocery bags!!! She came up with a Paper bag portrait of herself! Perhaps she was inspired by our Paper Bag Puppets that we did about a month ago?  It turns out that this is an activity many Art Therapists use...keep reading to find out more!

C got working on her idea right away! She didn't like the writing on the bag,  so we quickly covered the words up with yellow construction paper!  Then she began drawing a face right away!

Soon after that, she began adding more with paint bingo markers, smiley stickers, hair like our construction paper strip sculpture (she reminded me),  and more construction paper , and pom poms! Then she said,  "I'm done!" Definitely the attention span of a typical 5 year old!

And that is why the post is over....that is about how long it took C to make this!

I think the paper bag self portrait turned out rather well.

 What do you think? 


An Art Therapy Activity?

***The interesting thing about this Paper Bag Self Portrait Idea is that it is featured as an Art Therapy Activity here from The Art Therapy Blog.  I researched a bit more and found this to be a popular activity that people do in an art therapy session!  On the front of the bag you are to make your self portrait (like C did), then on the sides and back express fears, dreams, and aspirations.  Then inside the bag put things that about yourself.  I love the idea about putting things inside the bag...C would love doing that!

Here is a Paper Bag Self Portrait that someone submitted from the post I mentioned above.  Pretty cool, huh? I think so.

Now I am inspired to create a Paper Bag Self Portrait! 

I would love to try this with a group of kids to see what they would create.  This would make a great "Getting To Know You Activity" too.

Are you inspired to create a Paper Bag Self Portrait?


Join TinkerLab's Creative Challenge...Feb. 6