Containing the Mess - Painting in the bath with babies and toddlers

 

There are so many parents who find messy play at home a nightmare, they want to create beautiful artwork with their babies and toddlers but they don’t want their home destroyed in the process. I was the same, I’m not overly house proud really, and mess actually doesn’t bother me too much but it is definitely easier if it can be contained.

We found a solution. The bath. Easy wipe clean surfaces, containment, water friendly. Perfect.

 

We have been using the bathroom as our art workshop ever since. All I do is tape up a piece of paper or a canvas onto the tiles at the back of the bath, strip off L and put her in the bath with various brushes and paint in pots. L has fun and can pretty much do whatever she wants. Often she’ll paint the bath and the tiles as well as the picture. Once she’s finished I peel the pictures from the tiles and put them somewhere to dry. Then I turn on the shower over our bath, if you don’t have one, just start running your bath.

 

Our sensory play then continues with water play in the bath while L also gets clean. Win-win in my opinion.

Tape Resist Snowflake Craft

 

Here’s another amazingly easy winter craft for you. Last year L and I made these beautiful tape resist snowflake pictures. It takes almost no prep time but can get a bit messy.

I cut out 4 small squares of paper and stuck masking tape onto them in the shape of a snowflake. At the time I put L in her highchair for this craft but with older toddlers you could use the bath tub (if your mess averse) or just your usual crafting space.

I taped the paper down and gave L a few different shades of blue paint and some white. All had silver glitter mixed in with them to add winter ice sparkle.

L had fun painting the paper and once she had finished one picture, I stuck another one down.

 

The result was some very unique art to display for the festive season and an occupied toddler J

You could of course make any image you want with tape, and use any colours, have a play around and see what you could come up with, a few suggestions just to get you started; Christmas trees, snowmen, stars. You also can change this activity for any time of the year.

 

Please feel free to leave some pictures of your own tape-resist artwork in the comments for inspiration to others.

 

xoxo

 

Christmas Bauble Suncatcher Decorations

Christmas is a great time to get crafty with your little ones, there’s so much you can do with children of all ages. This week L and I made some Christmas bauble sun catchers. They were really easy and fun to do.

What you’ll need:

·         Different coloured tissue paper

·         Sticky backing plastic

·         Card

·         Pens/scissors

I drew and cut the templates for the bauble and then stuck them down on the plastic leaving the sticky side exposed for L to add the bauble decoration.

The tissue paper was cut into small pieces and L was simply told to stick them into the circles to decorate the baubles. Once all the tissue paper was used we stopped.

 

I then stuck another layer of sticky plastic to the back of the baubles (sticky side to sticky side) to seal the decoration. All that was left to do then was to cut the baubles out and stick them to the window, we used blutack, but you could also use a ribbon with a plastic window sticker. You can also make extra of these to give to family.

 

For more Christmas craft ideas follow us on Pinterest and Facebook.

 

xoxo