Dripping Dream: Drip Painted Vases

It's cherry blossom season in D.C.!  Well it was -- those things don't last very long.  We had planned to go blossom watching last weekend, but before going, we wanted to make some new vases to hold any spare blossoms we found (we wouldn't DARE pick them off the trees, but there are usually lots laying around).  This was not complicated, but it held Kane's attention for a LONG time.  Really.  Me not so much.  I did one with mom (sort of), but then I just wanted to paint myself.  You can't blame me.  Blue is my favorite color -- in fact it's the only one I can say, so I say it a lot.  But I do actually know blue when I see it.  And now you can see why we frequently craft almost completely naked.

Mom set old spaghetti sauce jars upside down on the top of paper towel rolls -- her intention was that we could hold the paper towel roll while painting the jars and avoid fingerprints.  It was a good idea, but a little too advanced for us - we kept knocking them over.  So we just set the jars down on the table.  I used a paintbrush, but Kane decided he wanted to squirt the paint directly on to the top of the jar and let it drop down the sides.  Mom was psyched because she had been wanting to do some drip paintings (like these), but was waiting until the weather turned nice so we could do it outside.  She wasn't sure we could control the amount of paint we squeezed onto the top, but Kane surprised her (although, he did use up A LOT of BioColor, which wasn't exactly cheap).  I was happy with using the paintbrush.  Kane made two and then wanted to do some scrape painting, which we've done before and loved.  And it used up a lot of the paint that had dripped down onto the table.

Once these beauties were painted, mom was presented with the problem of moving them.  And thus the hilarity began.  She did put them on top of paper towel rolls while they were still dripping paint -- so her fingerprints from the move were covered up easily.  But once they were up on their stilts, they fell over very easily.  Which meant the dining room table, then the kitchen counter, and then the kitchen stove and floor were completely covered in paint rather quickly.  Kane and I found this hysterical and didn't mind one bit that our jars were getting all kinds of jacked up.  In the end, the one that looked most destined to hold cherry blossoms (it was a pretty mixture of white, pink and red), didn't survive.

But, mishaps notwithstanding, we think that these turned out really amazing.  And even though the weather didn't cooperate with us for blossom touring, we found a new home for our spin painted egg carton flowers (btw, egg carton flowers would be a great way to reuse all those egg cartons left over from easter egg dying).  We will definitely be making some more drip art in the future.