Saturday Afternoon with Canvas and Paint 2009

We've always made gifts for our children to give for Christmas, as a way for the giving part of that holiday to be more personal for them. This family craft was from 2009 and we decided to come up with our own unique wall art. As you can see I love for my kids to feel like they have the freedom of expression and to be a part of the whole process. I want them to grow with their own artistic eye and to think outside the box when it comes to creating their dreams.

Before this Saturday afternoon with all of the paint and canvas we did a photo shoot. As you can tell I love to take pictures of my kiddos, so after church one day we did our traditional Christmas picture shoot. Those of you with kids will understand the "fun" in that, though finding the picture that shows the most personality of my children is my goal. Then we went out and bought the following for our craft:

1---11x14 Canvas (from the craft store)

Painter's Tape

Paint in any colors you'd like.

Brushes

Mod Podge

This first step is very simple, let your children go free with one color of paint and a brush. Have them paint the entire background of the canvas. Connor has such a fun time and really felt important because he went first.

I forgot to take a picture of the next step, which was what I did. I took a photo printed on regular printer paper and mod podged it to the canvas. After it dried then I applied painters tape over top of the picture so that the next part, done by Bella, could be done.

Bella loved doing this part, because the photo was protected or "voided" out, she could do whatever she wanted on the canvas without worry of getting it onto the picture. She did her own designs on each of the paintings. 

Abagail's job was to paint a word that she felt described the person receiving the gift. She did a really nice job with picking out the perfect word and then painted in cursive onto the canvas. She also added metallic paint detailing around the area that was voided out for the picture. 

After everything was dry, we removed the painter's tape from the picture. We ended up with this beautiful canvas art that shows the personality of our kiddos. We put them in basic frames also found at the craft store and were done. 

These are the other pictures that we did that year, all of them with their own word and own personality when it comes to the actual painting. Everyone loved how personal their gift was and the kids really enjoyed doing each one. We did this in one Saturday Afternoon, like most of our children inspired projects. Just one idea coming from Abagail about expressing her desire to paint and this idea popped into my head. 

 Many Blessings,

The Pearsall Family