More Art

We have had the best, most unexpected sunny and warm weather this week!

Since we are hosting Easter this year, I decided C would make the placemats, giving us something fun and arty to do outside. I hauled his high chair and another chair out to the front yard, a bunch of white paper, and his snack (grapes and freshly 'juiced' pineapple juice -he has a cold and pineapple has a lot of vit c).

To make the paint, I took (nearly expired) sour cream and mixed it with a bit of vanilla yogurt (just to increase the amount a bit, the sc on its own would have been fine) and since I only had blue food colouring, I microwaved two bowls - one containing frozen black and blueberries, and the other with strawberries - for about 3 minutes. The resulting juice was poured into the sour cream (which was in three separate bowls) - the strawberries made pink 'paint' and the blue and blackberries made purple. I used the blue food colouring to do the third baby blue colour.

I added a little bit of flour to the purple and pink bowls since the juice watered it down quite a bit. The flour allowed me to add as much juice as needed to get the colour correct. It worked really well. I was very pleased with the results.

Because C had to paint 12 of the 'placemats', I put the bowls of paint beside his chair and dabbed a spoonful of each paint colour on the paper for him. He would smoosh it around, rub it off the paper sometimes, and occasionally lift the paper up to crumple the crap out if it. Sometimes I did all three colours, and sometimes only one or two. Near the end though, all the placemats were blue. He was quite verbal about the blue bowl of paint, and so it was used a lot.

When they had dried completely (this took a while, so I just left them overnight) I gave each one a blue border with regular blue computer paper, and laminated them (I am a kindergarten teacher. Laminating is one of my very favourite things, ever). They are beautiful!

Success, and a happy baby.

(Note: He stuck his fingers in his mouth once, to try the paint - was obviously not inpressed with the taste, and did not do it again.)