Though this afternoon’s squirt gun painting wasn’t planned, a monstrous hour and 45 minute clean-up after quiet play time didn’t leave us much time before dinner, so we ditched our other {more involved} painting plans and tried something super simple and quick to set up!
Tag Archives: outdoor painting
Rainy Day Splatter Painting
While living in a city that gets as much rain as Vancouver does can be a little deflating some days, I know that we’ll miss it dearly once we’re back in the sandy desert. So instead of letting the past week of rain keep us indoors today, we decided to get out and enjoy it. After a morning walk and a long play at the park before lunch, we decided to head back outside this afternoon. We brought along with us a baking sheet, some liquid food colouring (the neon kind), and some white construction paper to do an easy and fun art activity… Rain splatter painting!
To get started, Gracen laid a piece of construction paper down on the baking sheet and fully enjoyed dropping splots of food colouring all over it.
Once she had the food colouring exactly how she wanted it, we simply let the rain do its job. At this point, it was raining quite hard, so the splatter effect happened quickly. Grae loved watching the colours pop up off the page and land back down on the page in little dots. At some point during the process, she’d say “This one is done!” and we’d pop it inside the house to dry and grab another sheet of paper to splatter.
The end result is beautiful, splotchy, watercolour-esque paintings, just like this one. Fun, right?
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
Footprint Butterfly Flower Pot
A few weeks ago, Gracen’s {great} aunt sent me this photo of a footprint butterfly flower pot and asked if Miss G could make her one. After some serious detective work, I believe that the photo was originally shared on Carol’s Classic Gifts and Decor’s Facebook page, but I could be wrong (please correct me if I am!) Though there were no instructions attached, the project looked pretty straight forward, we went for it.
{this post includes affiliate links}
Here’s what we used… A clay pot large enough to fit Grae’s growing feet on the side, some acrylic paint, a few old foam paintbrushes, a black Sharpie (though black paint and a fine brush or a paint pen would be great also), and lastly, a matte spray-on clear coat.
Because of the potentially {very} messy nature of this project, we opted to do it outside with the garden hose and a pile of old rags nearby (and I’m thankful we did…things got MESSY despite my precautionary steps). To get started, I applied a thick layer of paint to Grae’s foot. In our case, we used purple and green (Auntie Judy’s favourite colours) with a little bit of white in the middle, but you could obviously use any colours you like. One thing I would say is that if you want the colours to mix together where they meet, you should probably help them along with your paintbrush while on the foot. I expected the mixing to sort of naturally happen when Grae’s foot was pressed down on the pot, but it didn’t (not a lot, at least).
We carefully pressed one foot onto the pot, washed it off, then painted the other foot and pressed it on so that the two straight edges were in the middle (with a small space between them) and the two arched edges were pointing outwards.
After giving the footprints a few minutes to dry, I used the Sharpie to draw a very simple butterfly body and antennae in the centre.
Then we flipped the pot over and wrote a little message so that Auntie Judy will remember who made the pot and when it was created years down the road.
As a final step, I gave the butterfly part of the pot a light spray of matte sealant, just to make it a little more durable. Ten minutes later it was dry and we had an adorable personalized gift that was both easy and inexpensive to make.
If you love making personalized gifts, be sure to check out our ‘I love you’ pillowcase, our hand-shaped ring dish, our clay handprint keepsakes, and our paper strip handprint keepsake.
♥
Are you following us on Facebook and Instagram?
We’d love to have you!
Simple Outdoor Fun: Painting Sidewalk Chalk Shapes With Water
While we’ve done plenty of regular mess-free painting on our sidewalks and fence, today Gracen asked if I’d draw her something to paint. While maybe not as open-ended as I’d usually aim for, I do find that sometimes she prefers having a jumping off point, so I drew an assortment of shapes on the ground using sidewalk chalk. The activity was actually perfect for her new found interest of colouring in the lines, and when the water dried, it left our cement pad covered in beautiful, watercolour-esque shapes. So simple, but she enjoyed so much that she’s already asked to do it again.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
Snow Spray Painting
Though it feels like we’ve had a good, long winter vacation already (because we have), we’re lucky enough to have one more week to spend in the Okanagan before Bradley’s return to work. And while we’ve been doing more than our fair share of relaxing (and indulging – oy!), we’ve also been trying to make the most of our time with the snow, because before you know it, we’ll be back to our city of rain, rain, rain.
Today we tried something new – snow spray painting!
In order to make the paint, all I did was pick up a couple of cheap spray bottles (I made sure to give the triggers a little squeeze in store first – some are little hand-friendly, and others are not) and filled them with some cold water and food colouring.
Then we headed outside {in pajamas} to decorate the freshly fallen snow.
We played with the nozzle on our spray bottles to get the flow just how Miss G liked it – in a steady stream in order to achieve maximum distance. ☺
Her goal? Covering as much of the snow in snow spray paint as possible.
“A new spot now!”
Though using a fine mist is a little trickier (because you need to be quite close to the snow for it to show up well), it makes pretty cool results…. Pink snow anyone?
Of course when you’ve painted your little heart out and you’re ready for a break, you can always topple over in a snowbank and have a rest. ☺
Snow Spray Paint
- 3/4 cup of cool water
- 10 drops of food colouring
Pour the water into a small spray bottle and add the food colouring. Repeat for multiple colours/bottles. Spray the snow. Have fun!
♥
Keep up with all the Mama.Papa.Bubba. fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.