In Home Entertainment: Saran Wrap Painting (and salt painting, too)

This one has been on our arts & crafts list for a while, but because it requires some restraint, mom wasn't sure we were ready for it yet. But, she finally figured restraint, schmestraint. It's super simple, but does require adherence to a few rules to get it to turn out correctly (although, we're always up for bucking the rules, so if you do, and it turns out cool, let us know!). You'll need watercolors (or watered down tempera paint -- either will do, we tried both), thick watercolor paper (this one's necessary), and some saran wrap.

First, run the watercolor paper under water until it's nice and wet. Then, paint on it liberally with watercolors. When you get a good deal of paint on there, stretch a piece of saran wrap across the top and bunch it up with your fingers. You can make patterns or go random. Resist the urge to rip the saran wrap off. Instead, let it sit overnight or until the paper is mostly dry (another necessary step for this art project). Once it's dry, peel off the saran wrap and admire the picture underneath -- the plastic sort of bunches up the paint, making neat lines and glossy surfaces. Super cool.

We also took this as an opportunity to try once and for all to get salt painting to work out for us, which it hasn't in the past. I think the key to doing it, as with the saran wrap project, is good, thick paper sufficiently wet and a large amount of paint on the page. You basically do the same steps outlined above, but instead of covering it with saran wrap, sprinkle coarse salt over the painting. Then also let that dry overnight. Trippy.

(the pics of the finished paintings are not great, but it would seem that there is no freakin' daylight to take good photos this winter)

Salt of the Earth: Painting with Salt

We've seen so many beautiful watercolor-salt painting projects on the web, but have had very little luck ourselves.  We're starting to think the pictures are fake (because it certainly couldn't be our technique).  We had some success recently by first wetting the watercolor paper with water, then using very watered down watercolors liberally, and then applying the salt.  As usual Kane just wanted to pour and scrub mountains of salt on his paper (we're thinking of setting him up with a little homemade salt scrub).  I had better luck, but didn't want to stick with it for very long because it didn't show immediate results (once they dried, the salt sort of soaks up the color and makes pretty marks on the paper).  We tried to be patient, but I think this is one we'll stick on the shelf until we are older.