A granddaughter’s stay on a recent rainy day, gave us time for a fun, Make-Do project. Our make-do’s are spur-of-the-moment ideas, where we shop the house, garage, shed and workshop for materials and supplies for an art project; there’s no trip to the store for anything. See other Make-Do fun HERE, HERE and HERE. Posing here is my granddaughter Ashley. A basketball and soccer junky with both comedic and artistic talents, she keeps us all entertained.

Today, in the recycle bin, we found some cardboard and styrofoam packing materials in in cool shapes and sizes. In the craft closet there were some dollar-store canvases in different sizes. Some were white cloth, and others were just paper with an image already printed on them. Finally, in the crawl space, we found several colors of latex wall paint.

I always have several sizes of old or “throw-away” paint brushes on hand. These are wall painting brushes, in sizes from 1 – 4 inch widths. You’ll find these in any big-box paint department in bags of mixed sizes but you can get individuals in a specific size too.

First we covered our work table, then laid out all of our supplies. Each paint container had its’ own brush, so that colors didn’t get mixed together in the cans. We had two sizes of canvases, so first we picked two colors and painted our backgrounds. DON’T FORGET to paint the edges of your canvas as well as just the front.

Next we added a little texture to the surface, dabbing our neutral colors onto the canvas with cloth rags.

Then we broke apart the cardboard and styrofoam, into fun shapes. Putting paint on the shapes, we then pressed them onto scrap paper, to experiment and see how we liked the patterns. Now we used the pieces we liked, and pressed designs onto our canvases.

Finally, we decided our work was still lacking, so after practicing some dribbles and splatters, we added a few of those free-hand and there you have it.

TIPS:
1. This is a MESSY project. Either work in an area where paint splatters don’t matter, or be sure to cover table and area surfaces with protective clothes.
2. Assign each color its own brush. Don’t intermix paint colors in their containers.
3. To keep them from drying out, brushes can be loosely wrapped in dampened paper towels between uses.
4. When painting your background, don’t forget to paint the edges of the canvas. This way you won’t have to frame your finished art … unless you want to.
5. Keep a bucket of water and lots of spare rags handy for mishaps.
6. Have one jar of water to put all brushes in when you are finished.

We hung some of our work at my house, and Ashley took some home for her room as well.

Don’t stress about a project, just have fun and start one!

Later – Cheryl

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