Another Day, Another Project

I ask myself, will I attempt things like this with kid #3?  Who knows...

Yet another Pinterest Project has made it to my blog.  Since Evelyn moved into our room we haven't made a lot of changes to the space (aside from the furniture swap).  The curtains stayed the same, shelf stayed up, I just swapped the picture over the crib for a mirror I had and put some of her own items on the shelf.
Part of that was sheer laziness, another part was wishful thinking that it wasn't worth doing for the short time we'd be in this house, and the other part was not wanting to buy or hang stuff just to have things on the walls.  If I'm going to put something up I want to love it.

Enter our newest craft. I saw these cute canvases on someone's board but there have been lots of variations all over the internet. I thought letting the kids lend a hand would be fun so after painting the basecoat and sticking on the letters...

(The full verse is Romans 15:13 but we only did the first half, split between three canvases: "May the God of Hope fill you with joy and peace.")

I prepped our work area:

Prepped the crew:

And after a brief hesitation they went to town!:

The "After" photos...

 

Cleanup was actually a breeze, I had slipped trash bags over their chairs and the plastic trays wipe up easily.

Then it was baths for the artists:

These are the nearly-finished products. 

 This is where I hit a snag.  See, the letters are supposed to peel off easily leaving the orange to show through underneath.  Well, I should have used vinyl letters, because the paper glossy letters I used sort of separated and I was left with a lot of paper stuck to the paint.  Also, like cheap painter's tape, my scrapbooking letters were not exactly leak-proof. I've been working on cleaning things up with an exacto-knife to scrape off the paper and hand painting in some of the letters.  I'll post completed pics soon!

In meantime, here are some suggestions for making this project work better:

-Use vinyl letters or a cricut and contact paper, not scrapbooking paper letters.

-If you're not doing this as a toddler activity, spray paint would not leak under the letters and give you a more uniform color if you're doing a solid color.

-If you are doing this for kids, use a non-toxic paint.  I did not check the label before I did it, which I realized about 2.5 seconds into letting them sink their hands into the gooey paint.  So I had to watch them like a hawk to make sure none of it made it's way into their mouths.  Wasn't hard really, we were painting for all of five minutes as I didn't want things to get out of control, but still...

-If your kids are not just rinsing off in the tub and are prone to drinking the bathwater, make sure you empty the water after you get the paint off and then refill.  I didn't want my kids drinking green water ;)