Gift wrapping paper made from water colour art!

A spends a lot of time colouring - she loves process art more than the drawing and colouring variety - she loves to dribble with her pencil and then go over them with a sketch pen or water-colours. When you don't get what it is that she has made, she'll say it's a design - so its supposed to be random!

There were days when she would take entire reams of newspaper or the art scroll paper on her easel and keep experimenting with her water colours (this usually happens in spurts - there will be days on end when she wouldn't want to pick up colouring). Finally, I decided to do something about the mounting reams! We used them as gift wrapping paper! :-) 

Initially, we used it when we were gifting each other at home. Appa's birthday, Valentine's day, Mother's day - and the gift would be wrapped in our doll's colourful artwork! And then we started gifting them to others as well. I think it is a great idea. Not only does this encourage art in whatever manner your child might enjoy, it also gives you something to do with all those papers! 

I'll share a few ideas here to start with - 

WATER COLOUR PRINTS WITH OBJECTS -

We took a sheet of paper and used everything from bottle caps to onions and potatoes and even our hand and finger prints :-) The activity is totally random so there is nothing that is not allowed! Since we were making this to wrap a birthday gift for a friend, we even wrote her name with our fingers! :-) Doesn't it look lovely?

DRAWING ON ALUMINIUM FOIL - 

This is one fun activity we found online and liked a lot. A says this is her most favourite activity with colours yet! :-) We did this by sploshing colours with a paintbrush on aluminium foil (the food wrapping variety) and making images on them with cotton ear-buds - essentially clearing the drawing area of colour. We then pressed down the artwork onto our paper and when you peel the foil out, voila! your super art is ready! Take a look! :-)

Some more prints - 

COLOURING WITH CREDIT CARD - 

This is an activity that any child would enjoy completely! Its as simple as can be. Here goes -

Take a sheet of paper and randomly, put up blobs of water colour paint here and there. I did not used watered down paint, but took them directly from the bottle. Give your little one a credit card (unused, inactive ones preferred, though no real damage comes out of this)  and let her have a great time creating her masterpiece! :-)

Doesn't the final output remind you so much of Eric Carle's artwork? I so loved this activity! It is so vibrant and colourful, and you just cant go wrong with this! We even created new colours - green, brown, orange with the blending that happened in this activity! :-) 

CREDIT CARD COLOURING OVER WAX DRAWINGS -

This is a small variant of the earlier credit card painting. We first drew on our art paper with candle-wax (even a white crayon will do). I've tried to take a photo from a decent angle, but white-on-white doesn't really show well. 

Once your drawing is done, you have to do the same activity as above with your credit card. When you start spreading your colours, the drawings start appearing!

I'm not sure if you can make them out, but there is a tree, a house and a rainbow with a girl standing under it! :-) 

Did you enjoy these as much as we did? I shall share a lot more of such ideas here, most of which are taken from the internet! It's sometimes overwhelming to know there is so much creativity and beauty out there to be explored! Cheers to all the mommies out there who nurture their children with love for unstructured fun and creativity!