Keeping Children Busy in the Holidays
Arty Children
My children like to watch Five Minute Crafts which is on YouTube and shows creative life hacks through videos. Recently they saw how to create artworks with food colouring milk and dishwashing liquid.
Playing while Mum recovers
Today I had a virus and went to bed and had two hours sleep. I don’t usually sleep during the day time but I felt really crook and couldn’t keep my eyes open. The children decided to do art works while I was asleep and my husband was mowing the lawn. These artworks are very simple to make and very effective. They are a great school holiday activity especially on a rainy day.
How to Make them
Here are the steps for how to make a food colouring artwork.
Step one
Put a thin layer of milk in a tray or on a plate big enough to fit your piece of paper.
Step two
Put some drops of food colouring in the pattern that you would like. There are no rules here.
Step three
Take a skewer or toothpick and get a drop of dishwashing liquid on the end.
Step four
Put the end of the toothpick or skewer into the solution.
Step five
Watch it spread and make a pattern in the food colouring.
Step six
Place your paper facedown in the solution and bring it out of the solution quickly.
Step seven
Put your paper right side up on some newspaper to dry.
Examples of our artworks.
Here are some of the artworks that my children made. I really love them. Every artwork is different and you can never make the same one twice. This can provide hours of fun in the school holidays and helps children to be more creative.
I am going to make some of these myself and then do one of two things. Either a high key photo printed over the top of the colours in black and white, or I may draw the black and white portrait with Chinese ink. I bought a wonderful book the other day from the Christchurch Art Gallery all about ink, which I’m totally in love with. I’m also wondering how I can combine them with my creative in-camera photography? Maybe a double exposure with an artwork might work. I’ll try that very soon.