Art | One Perfect Day

It feels like ages since we got our craft on around here, so today we took advantage of the gorgeous sunshine and took our art outdoors. We are fortunate enough to have a creek running close by our house and we often head down there, throwing stones and twigs into the water, and watching them float downstream. Today we took a basket along and R(3) gathered a few things here and there - stones, twigs, leaves. It was lovely to slowly amble along, stopping to inspect a rock, a tree, or a flower. Talking about what we were seeing. Feeling the rough textures of tree trunks, or the coolness of the stones on the ground. When we returned home, we took a walk around our yard and R gathered a few more items to add to his collection.

You can just make out the blue and yellow paint on one the stones in the above pic. These stones were painted during our Big Messy Art adventure a couple of weeks ago. When we finished up that day, I tossed the painted stones back into the garden bed. They make me smile every time I walk past them. They caught R’s eye too by the looks of things.

Once R was happy with his collection of natural items, we set up in the backyard to create some hanging art.

For this project, we used:

A long, think tree branch (ours was about 70 cm long but any size would work)
Found natural items (leaves, flowers, twigs, stones, pieces of bark)
Fishing line (any thread would work such as cotton, nylon or silk)
A sewing needle
Paint and paint brushes

We began by painting the long thick tree branch. R chose gold, blue, green and pink paint and he decided to save time by using two brushes at once!

You could wait for the paint to try before moving on to the next step, but we didn’t bother. A few pink and gold fingers never hurt anyone! I tied four lengths of the nylon thread to the painted tree branch. I didn’t measure them, there’s no need for accuracy with this project, but at a guess I would say they were around 40 to 50cm in length. I spaced them fairly evenly across the branch but again, I didn’t bother to measure that they were spaced exactly. This piece is all about the freeform beauty of nature, not precise measurements.

Once I had tied the four lengths of thread to the branch, I threaded a needle on to one of the lengths of thread and R began threading on items from his basket of natural goodies. This was the very first time R had used a needle and thread and he really enjoyed it.

It was such a relaxing afternoon, collecting natural items as we walked together, and then bringing them back home to create something lovely.

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Last week we took advantage of the one tiny break we had from the rain and went outside for some big messy art. Recognise that mish mash of colours on the left? Yep, that’s our homepage image. Those colours make my heart sing!

I began by taking out our roll of butcher’s paper. We have this one from IKEA. These rolls of paper can be found in lots of dollar stores and craft suppliers, and they are so economical. They seem to last forever, even for the most prolific of artists. R(3) often likes to put one brush stroke down on a page and call it done and he goes on to a new page, so we go through a LOT of paper. Buying one of these rolls was the best thing I ever did. After cutting four long strips from the roll, I then taped them together to make a large sqaure canvas. The idea is to create as much space for rolling, spreading and pouring paint as possible.

I laid the paper outside, and R began to pour paint all over it. Even this stage was great fun for R as he squeezed and shook the paint bottles, discovering how his movements affected the way the paint splashed or poured on to the page.

I thought it already looked great, before the fun messy part had even begun!

Next we added rolling pins and sponge rollers to the mix.

It wasn’t long before R started coming up with his own ideas about how he was going to create this art and THAT’S when I knew we were having fun. First he found a stick in the yard. He soaked it in paint and stamped it across the paper…

Then it was hand prints and finger prints….

Next R engaged in some sensory play, squealching and squeezing the paint between his fingers, and running his slippery hands over the stones that I had used to weigh down the paper on to the ground…