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

 

Stamp Painting with Plastic Shot Glasses

 

This is a super simple messy play idea with a twist. Today we did a beautiful painting using plastic shot glasses as our painting tool of choice.

Using the shot glasses as a stamp rather than using a brush creates a different experience for your little one not to mention getting a unique piece of art for your house.

 

We used:

·         A small canvas (I almost always like to use a canvas because you never know when you’ll get a really lovely piece that you want to hang- plus you can always give your child’s creations as gifts for family at Christmas and birthdays)

·         8 plastic shot glasses

·         3 plastic plates for our paint

·         6 different paint colours and white added to each plate

 

 

L really enjoyed todays painting, she stamped lots and also rolled the glasses across the canvas and then got her hands involved mixing the colours together. Inevitably our end product has no sign of any circle stamping but that was never really the point J

 

The finished product

 

Some close-ups to show the beauty :)

 

 

Don't forget to play!

xoxo