Becoming Betti Baker: Playroom Artpop

Most weeks here the girls and I have a little craft project that we undertake, so this week I picked out something that we could do that could be hang in the playroom seeing as I'm trying to add some more colour into our living areas at the moment. I think it was a huge success and we all had a heap of fun doing it this afternoon!

So here is what we created, some bright and colourful pieces with the rules of our playroom on them. Love, Share, Laugh and Play. They were quite cheap to make as I picked up the small canvases at a local Bargain shop for $2.95 each and we had the rest of the stuff we needed lying around the house. They were nice and quick for the girls to do too, which is great, as it always seems that thy get over painting quite fast, I often find the setting up process longer than the activity, who am I kidding that's like most things when it involves kids. The longest part of this was the mummy prep work that I need to do beforehand. I was lucky today and my mum had Lala, 3 for a few hours so I got all the preparation done while she was there and Deedee, 1 was having her nap. Once everyone was home and awake we got painting or at least the girls did.

So here is what we used : 4 cheap small canvases, some painters tape, a sharpie, a little scalpel, paint brushes and pink, aqua and yellow paints. We choose these colours as there are the colour in the bunting hanging in the playroom.

I started off with covering most of the canvas with the tape, then I wrote out the words I had picked in a sharpie, I had a play around with how I was going to write them on a piece of paper first to see what thickness and style appealed to me. Now was the trickiest part, I used a small scalpel, that I found in my husbands arts supplies, to carefully cut out the words, a few times I pressed a little too hard and nicked the canvas, this turned out to be not a big deal as the amount of paint the girls put on most certainly plugged up any slits. Once all four words where cut out they were ready to be painted, the girls went to town on them, I just was on stand by to make sure the letters didn't roll up and paint get anywhere it wasn't meant to be. After letting them dry somewhat it was time to slowly pull the painters tape off. At some points this was tricky as the paint was on really thick and I had let it dry too much so I need to the scalpel to help separated the paint and tape, but it wasn't too bad at all.