Materials:
- Watercolor paper
- Crayons or pencils
- Watercolor paints
- Brushes
- Colored construction paper
- Blank note cards
- Glue
- Scissors
These note cards are perfect for everyday greeting cards, as well as holiday or birthday cards. They also look good framed!
You can start with a full size piece of paper that you cut into smaller pieces later, or you can pre-cut the paper into smaller pieces, such as 3 x 5 inches. Use a good quality heavy weight paper, such as watercolor paper. Hold the paper in place on the table with masking tape and let your child draw with crayons or pencils. Maia usually uses chunky crayons, but gets most excited about using adult pencils and pens.
Maia painting over her drawing. Photo by Bobbi Holland.
After your child is finished drawing, bring out the paints and brushes and encourage your child to paint over the drawing. Watercolor paints are transparent enough to allow the drawing to show through.
You can buy the dry watercolor cakes in a tin, watercolors in a tube, or liquid watercolors. I prefer liquid watercolor paint or tubes for toddlers. If using the watercolor tubes, squeeze a small amount into a bowl and add plenty of water before handing the bowl to the child with a brush. If using the liquid watercolors, you can either use them full strength or dilute them with water.
Two to three colors—one per bowl—is more than enough at the beginning.
Let the paintings dry.
Mixed-media paintings by the Toddler Art Group. Photo by Bobbi Holland.
After the painting dries, you can glue it to a blank note card or a piece of paper folded in half. I like to cut a piece of construction paper in a complementary color about a half inch wider than the artwork to provide a visual frame. I then assemble and glue the three pieces together:
- folded note card
- colored construction paper
- artwork
Set under a heavy book for a few hours so it will dry flat.
(Note: For these cards, we actually used a sparkly paint that one of the art group members brought in, rather than watercolors, but we diluted the paints with water so that they would work somewhat like watercolors.)
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