Friday, July 4, 2014

Rainy day supplies

Happy 4th everyone!

It's been forever since I wrote: third pregnancy and finishing off the semester took all of my energy. But now that I have some free time (ahem), very weather appropriately I decided it's finally time to share a summer supplies list. It should come in handy for all you heading out to vacation homes and encountering some cabin fever moments :)


I found that kids are always ready to come up with stories via drawings. My favorite drawing material (for adults as well) this past year have been oil pastels. What's great about them is that they act somewhat like oil paints, mixing one on top of another and creating great color combos. A parents' paradise too is that they don't smudge or make little artist hands overly dirty. No pastel paper is necessary for support, but tinted background does make things a lot easier for an adult artist.
 
Fine motor skills are forever useful, and a set of fine quality construction paper, a pair of scissors and some glue sticks will go a long way in perfecting some art projects.
Start with cutting out basic shapes, but then add finer details like ragged edges of grass, or patterns on top of a tree trunk, overlayering. Feel free to experiment with whatever scrap material is lying around the house like buttons, yarn, twigs and shells found outdoors, for more texture and dimension. It also might be useful to invest in a glue brush, and use Palmer's Glue for finer control of details.












Sculpting is an activity that can occupy you all for hours. The only problem with most sets sold for kids is that the material is either crumbly or unbendable, and it breaks just as soon as a figurine is built. What I found to work best so far is Sculpey III sets that are also sold in lots of fun color set combinations. Once the project is done, it can be baked in a home oven for 15 min, at 275F. These do need to be conditioned for a few minutes, the most fun way of doing it is with a pasta machine.



And though it's supposedly not recommended for children to use watercolor paints till the age of 12, we've had some very successful projects even by 3 year olds. Only mistake to avoid is buying thin watercolor paper, 90 lbs or lighter. I typically go for 140lb cold press sets, 9 x 12 inch in size. I also don't like spiral sets as pulling out paper is never easy. My favorite for both kids and adults are Crayola educational watercolor sets, and believe me - I compared them with Yarka boxes. They come with a pretty good round brush as well.

I know you don't want to spend too much time at arts/crafts stores, so these key supplies should suffice, oh and don't forget a large sketchbook, newsprint quality should do just fine :)

Happy travels and have a great summer!

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