Saturday, August 8, 2009

THE STEPS:

1) Tape around the edges of your watercolor paper. This is so that,
 

no matter how crazy your child may go while painting, you will still end up with a nice clean edge like this:
 

(I think peeling the tape off at the end may have been Nora's favorite part. Magic!)
 

2) Set your child up with the painting surface (in our case, the back of a placemat). Have your child fill in the entire area with a layer of paint.

3) Using a Q-tip, let your child draw whatever picture she wants. But, explain that if she wants to make a print, she'll have only a few minutes to draw because the print needs to be made before the paint dries. (We abandoned a few pictures to live out their lives as "mere" paintings, because I didn't want to nag at Nora about the time while she was enjoying her creativity. Paintings that she finished more quickly went into second lives as Prints.)

4) Genly place your watercolor paper atop the placemat. Again, gently, rub the back of the paper, being careful not to let it shift (or your image will blur). Nora wanted to help with this step, but she is three, and simply could not do it without rubbing her image into oblivion. Once this became clear, she was okay with me taking over.

5) Peel up the watercolor paper to reveal your image. COOL!

Then hang them up and enjoy:
 
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