Flower Painting

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We love to paint at our house. I am always trying to think of fun and exciting painting methods for Skyler to try. On the blog, we have painted with yarn, we made muddy tracks with animals and trucks, and we have used potatoes, carrots, and toilet paper rolls to make prints with paint. It is fun to give Skyler a new painting tool and watch his eyes light up and see how excited he is to create!

With winter behind us now (according to the calendar at least!) I have been looking for cheerful and springlike crafts and activities to brighten up our home. I was about to throw away some calla lilies that I bought around Valentine's Day, when I realized even though they don't look great anymore, I could give them a purpose before tossing them in the trash!

The coffee filter clovers that were acting as sun catchers on our bay window were fairly quickly discolored by the sun, and I have missed our Valentine sun catchers made with contact paper, so this seemed like a perfect spring sun catcher, using flowers as a tool to paint with!

I taped down a large piece of contact paper for Skyler to paint (on the non-stick side of the contact paper) and we mixed together some sparkly red and white paint to create our flower painting. 

Skyler had a lot of fun using the flowers as a painting tool. Of course, he had to try out all four flowers and he spent time using both the head and stem of the flowers to paint. Skyler kept asking for "more paint peeeeas!!" and filled the entire piece of paper with different shades of pink!

My favorite spot on Skyler's painting - a perfect calla lily print!

I had planned on taking off the paper and placing the sticky side of the contact straight onto our window, but I decided to make a special set of frames to display his beautiful art! I thought it would be fun to make some big calla lily sun catchers for our window, a fun way to show off the painting he made with the same type of flower!

I searched for a calla lily outline, and this free clip art caught my eye! Using a marker on the removable part of the contact paper, I (very) loosely drew calla lily shapes like in the picture above, trying to make sure that I was getting most of his painted parts into the flower shapes!

After cutting them out, I traced each flower shape onto a piece of poster board. I could not get a good picture of just the pencil, but after making one line with pencil, I made a thick line on either side, so some of the frame would go outside of the contact paper when I glued them together. These are the outlines for the frames, you can see the pencil line between each group of red lines.

I painted our frames with the same sparkly red paint that Skyler did his flower painting with. When they were dry, I cut along the red marker lines and then glued the frames onto the contact paper (the same non-stick side that Skyler painted on).

Before they were glued together, but this is what they looked like before going on the window.

I made sure the glue had completely dried before trying to peel off the paper. I didn't want there to be any separation if the glue was even a little bit wet still!

I love how contact paper makes the perfect sun catcher when painted. It took a bit more time to frame his artwork (it didn't take much time though!), but I think it is fun how the flower frames show off what tool Skyler used to make his painting. I made sure the calla lily print stayed whole (on the top of the middle flower!)

To finish our spring sun catcher I added stems with green tape. I tried using decorative masking tape (the same one I used for our musical percussion tubes), but I didn't love it, so in the end I used Green FrogTape! It made a more substantial stem and was not quite as see through.

 The masking tape on the left just wasn't enough, but I love the look of the painting tape!

Isn't it so springy with the snow falling in the background? ;) We had a cold and cloudy day, so it is hard to see how beautiful Skyler's painted sun catcher is! The sparkly paint shimmers and lights up with the tiniest amount of sun - I love these flowers! Also, while I am a big fan of our home, town house living does not supply the best views, so the window covering is lovely to look at!

This was a fun craft for both of us! Skyler had a great time with his exciting new painting tool and I am happy that I was able to frame the painting in a way that showcases his beautiful creation!