Last night, as I was putting them to bed, the kids asked me if they could paint in the morning. To be completely honest we don't paint very often here because of reasons like
this.
I talked it over with a friend of mine last night on the phone and she suggested the wonderful idea of a bucket of warm soapy water placed outside and a towel. A place for the kids to go straight away after painting, we called it a 'worst of it off' bucket and it worked brilliantly!
The kids really enjoyed the painting. I set it up for them before they started (if you have small people you will know that often with painting you haven't even finished setting it up and they have already painted 8 pictures, their hands, face and tummy, the walls, chairs, table and on their way to the bathroom walked paint all through the house)
I also gave Joa his own paint and water and brushes, keeping him away from the older kids' stuff so that they could keep their colours a little less like this:
One small thing I omitted to note was that we had, in fact, completely run out of paper. But what a happy accident that was. I tore up an old bed sheet that I had gotten for
Rebe to embroider on and we used that instead.
The paintings turned out beautifully! The fabric took the paint much better than paper does, the colours smeared less and yet were strong and vibrant.
In fact the more we painted the more they reminded me of
prayer flags. So that's what we made them in to. I wrote some simple wishes and prayers onto some of the kids paintings and I strung them up onto a line in the breeze.
I love the idea of this autumn wind blowing our prayers for hope, joy and peace over this beautiful landscape.
Perhaps when you feel the wind on your face you will sense a little bit of friendship blowing on it from Under Rainbows :-)
They look lovely - I hope they stand up to the Irish weather!
ReplyDeletethere was rain last night and the wash has made them even prettier I think :-)
DeleteAhhhh...... I am going to go and stand outside now.... oh maybe not... there seems to be no wind at all at the mo! But I will think of you when I am out on the water next Wednesday and Thursday being assessed for my dinghy instructor renewal. It might calm the nerves!!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous flags. Think I might do some. I am with you on the paint thing.... hate it.... cant stand it.... would rather cut my head off with a blunt carving knife than give them paint!! I find it really annoying that my imaginative 7 year old insists on just making a mess a bit like Joa instead of painting a real picture!!
yes Rebe and obviously Benny very often just mess as well. I figure half of it is not getting to paint often enough, so that the messing is still very exciting...
DeleteOh lovely..... I wish we could have been painting with you today. One of my favorite things to do with my son when he was little was painting.....and the trick seems to be to use our grown-up brains to figure out how to make it stress-free.
ReplyDeleteIf only children weren't un-taught the joys of messing around with paint, playing with paint, we wouldn't have so many grown-ups saying they aren't artistic. (don't get me started.... hee hee...)
I love your prayer flags!
(And if the paint washes away in the rain, you can re-paint the fabric, using any shadows of color that are left as background.)
Whose handprint is that? Beautiful!
that's Joa's hand print, he did a wee series of them and I'm keeping a few as cards. Yes, the rain wash is great, in fact it changed rebe's picture a lot, all of a sudden there was a rainbow in it :-)
DeleteWe love painting on old sheets here, we do it out on the grass, for the above reasons! you can make great pirate and den flags with sheets
ReplyDeleteooo good idea :-)
DeleteOh, how lovely!! I love the idea of the sheet and being prayer flags. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
ReplyDeleteOoh what a great idea!! The 'getting the worst of it off' station, and the flags...thank you for sharing Laura :) x
ReplyDelete