Monthly Archives: May 2019

Shaving foam marbling

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Last week we were marbling with shaving foam at the Dundee International Women’s Centre so we thought we’d post some instructions so you can try it at home. This one is very easy and lots of fun – and surprisingly easy to clean up as the foam just washes away. There are lots of steps where little ones can help depending on how old they are. If they are too little to be allowed to squirt the foam then they can still help drip the paint and definitely help to stir it about and rub over the paper. It’s a nice surprise at the end when the final marbling is revealed and this is a nice thing to share together.

You need:

a baking tray

an old plastic credit card/store card

shaving foam (not gel)

water based paints

Thick, absorbent paper (thin paper will rip when you scrape off the foam)

chop stick

      

First squeeze the shaving foam into a shallow tray like a baking tray or the lid of a biscuit tin. Then use the credit card to spread it out nice and smooth (big people probably need to do that bit)

Now help them to drip some water based paint all over the top of the foam. You can also do this using food colouring but it’s quite stainy so I prefer to stick to washable paint. That way little ones can do it too.

 

Then the best bit. Give little ones a chop stick or old pencil and let them swirl around in the paint until it makes a nice pattern but before the colours all blend together (don’t do too much or it all goes a bit brown!). They can experiment with the effects of making circles or going up and down in lines.

 

Now press a sheet of paper on top of the foam and they can help you rub all over the top to make sure it absorbs. Then peel back to reveal…..

…a foamy mess!!! But don’t worry. Scrape off the foam using the credit card and underneath will be a beautiful swirling marble pattern – just like you’d find in the front on a fancy old book. You can let this dry and then use it to cut up and make cards, cover jotters, line drawers etc etc. Or just stick it on the wall and marvel at how cool it is! And the left over foam needn’t go to waste. Slap it all back into the tray, spread it out and start again. You can get at least 3 or 4 prints from each lot of foam before it gets too murky.

This activity is nice because it combines some sensory play using the foam with some creative play with the paint. It’s also nice that it needs some help from a big person so there are lots of opportunities for turn taking and working together. If you have left over foam you can also do as my little one does and turn your trucks into snow ploughs!

 

 

Circle Paintings

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This is another idea from our session with parents and little ones at DCA this week. We were responding to a circle painting by David Austen that was in his Underworld exhibition at DCA.

You need:

Paint – non-toxic water based

Trays to spread paint out in

A mixture of circle shaped objects – kitchen roll tubes, bowls, cups, bottle tops, corks, plant pots, old rolls of sticky tape etc. We raided the kitchen and the recycling for ours.

Paper – nice and thick is better so it doesn’t go soggy if overzealous

This one is very simple. Just spread out paint onto trays or plates and let little ones experiment with dipping the different objects into the paint and printing them on to the paper. You can develop this activity by using it to think about sizes – what circles will fit inside each other – and to think about colours as you layer them and make patterns.

 

Bubble Painting

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We were bubbling at DCA this week with a group of babies and toddlers and their grown ups so we thought we should post the recipe in case you want to try it at home.

You need:

Paint – non-toxic water based

Baby bubble bath (if it’s safe for babies in the bath it should be safe for this craft)

Straws

Cups and bowls

Paper (nice thick paper which is good and absorbent is best. Printer type paper will rip and not take in the colour)

Cover the bottom of each cup with paint and add a squirt of baby bubble bath. Top up with about twice the amount of water as paint and then mix thoroughly. You want the paint to be about a third of the way up the cup.

Then using a straw let children blow into the mixture until you get bubbles making a mound that comes out the top of the cup (if you think little ones are too small to blow and might suck instead then have a grown up do this bit). Then place a piece of paper on top of the cup and it will burst all the bubbles leaving a print. You can keep layering up different colours of bubbles in this way until you’re happy with your art work.

Happy bubbling!

 

 

Creative, messy session at DCA

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We ran our first session of creative and messy play for parents and preschoolers at the DCA this week. We are looking to see if there is an interest in these kinds of sessions for parents and toddlers so we will be doing monthly sessions and see what the feedback is. We would love these to be something that was always available. All our little ones at this weeks sessions were amazingly creative (and their grown ups very good about how messy we got them!).
 This week we responded to a beautiful painting of colourful circles in David Austen’s Underworld exhibition. We made paintings by printing circle shapes using lots of different objects pinched from the kitchen or the recycling – tubes, bowls, corks etc.
  Some little ones also experimented with their own ides for how to make marks using cars and tigers!

We then tried making bubble paintings by blowing into cups and bowls of painty, bubbly water and printing it onto paper and by blowing coloured bubbles to try and catch and pop on paper.
 
We will post the recipe for bubble paintings in our next post so you can try it at home.