The Artful Parent

Some Fancy Playdough Play

Maia's first day of summer vacation was earlier this week. The day unfolded, slowly and gently, without a plan of any kind. Pajamas were worn well into the day. There was lots of art, plenty of playtime, and some reading, swinging, and baking as well.

All in all, a good start to summer vacation.

Giving Watercolor Crayons a Try

We've tried watercolor pencils before a few times and they've never worked well for us, but I recently ordered some watercolor crayons to try and we are all thoroughly impressed. Daphne, Maia, her friend Marlise, and I all spent much of the afternoon drawing with them yesterday and then painting over the drawings with water to create the watercolor effect.

They really work! And they are easy and fun to use.

Washi Tape Art with Printed Masking Tape

I finally placed a long overdue order to Discount School Supply to restock some of our key art supplies. I told myself I was going to keep it to the basics (always hard for me) but couldn't help noticing some fun new printed craft tape—DSS's answer to Japanese washi tape apparently.

I've been wanting to try washi tape forever and so couldn't stop myself from adding this set to my cart.

I'm so glad I did, because it's been inspiring all sorts of fun tape art!

39 Ways to Play and Learn with Playdough

After posting about cooked versus no cook playdough recipes the other day, I thought I'd follow with a round up of ways for kids to use and play with the playdough. I began with links to my many playdough posts, but then went a little crazy and added all kinds of other playdough fun found around the web. Enjoy!

Use playdough to explore art concepts

• Make mosaic art with the playdough (from Putti Prapancha)
• Explore color mixing with playdough (from At the Butterfly Ball)
• Playdough dress up (from Inspiration Surrounds... Creativity Abounds)
• Make a playdough maze (from Squashed Tomatoes)
• Roll the playdough into balls, snakes, and snails (plus a kool-aid playdough recipe, from The Chocolate Muffin Tree)
• Make your own natural dyes for the playdough (from Mini Eco)

No Cook Versus Cooked Playdough

You know how much we love the cooked playdough recipe we've been making forever. It's the play clay from MaryAnn Kohl's First Art, and I've posted about it here and here as well as probably about 20 other times. It's awesome. The texture is smooth and playdough rubbery, the batch makes a more than generous amount to play with, and it lasts just about forever.

How does no cook playdough compare?

We've made five different no cook playdough recipes so far. Some use cold water, some use boiling hot water. Most of the other ingredients are the same but vary slightly in amounts. The recipes with the cold water are grainier and a bit drier in general. Here's the recipe for the no cook playdough I like the very best, using the hot water method.

A Round-Up of Artful Resources

Wow! What a fun blogiversary celebration that was and what a wonderful series of giveaways! I wanted to thank everyone who participated, both those who offered the lovely giveaways and those of you who left hundreds and hundreds of comments!  

Thank you!!

In case you didn't win something that you were really interested in, I'm including links to each of the giveaway posts here as a reminder of some of the artful resources we have available to us (you can click on the images or the links below...).

 

         

     

   

Stubby Pencil Studio Giveaway

Stubby Pencil Studio is like a candy store for art lovers. With the tagline of "eco products for creative kids" you can imagine the fun goodies available—everything from crayon rocks and cute hedgehog erasers to a wide array of sketchbooks and pencils (colored and otherwise). I love to browse her shop "aisles" looking for something novel to try.

 

A few of our family's favorite art products come from Stubby Pencil Studio and include these SuperColor Jumbo Felt Pens by Alpino (bigger than you would expect, plus they come with a marker stand!), crayon rocks (always fun!), and Trimax Jumbo Colored Pencils (great quality and good for little fingers).

Valentine Crayon Giveaway: A Colorful Set of Earth Grown Heart Crayons

Need a Valentine's gift or just some playful crayons to inspire your young artists? Melissa from Earth Grown Crayons is offering this set of heart-shaped soy crayons as a giveaway to one lucky reader. And she has all kinds of other fun ones in her Etsy store, too—turtles, Chinese dragons, stars, frogs, and butterflies. I especially love these "woodland bunny" crayons and think I'll need to buy some for Easter baskets this year...

My Favorite Kids' Art Supplies

As you know, I buy most of our art supplies through Discount School Supply. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: when it comes to art materials, they are tops for quality, price, and service. While teachers have known about them for a long time, I don't think parents are as aware of them as a kids art supply source. Many people have asked me in the past what to buy from them (their catalog is huge and somewhat overwhelming!), so here's my list. It can be yours, too.

Launching My Blogiversary Celebration with an Artterro Art Kit Giveaway

This Saturday is my four year blog anniversary! Woohoo! I kind of snoozed through my last few blogiversaries, but this one feels big to me. To celebrate this milestone, I have lined up an amazing series of artful giveaways for the rest of the month. I am so excited about this! You can check back every day for new, fun drawings to enter for art products, books, and other artful products. (FYI, I am continuing to run the guest posts series, so on some days there will be two posts in a day. Extra fun!)