Monsters!

Welcome to Day 4 of the Hoosier Horror Blog Hop! Today's project was something that I came up with totally on my own. I think this turned out great, and I plan on doing it with the kids next year as well, to see how things change.

Today we are using a fun supply called bleeding tissue. How appropriate for Halloween, no? This is not your normal tissue paper that can be found in the cards section of the store. This is a special kind of tissue paper meant to "paint" when wet. This can be found at most art supply stores. We used it before on an Earth day craft!


Supplies needed:
white construction paper
bleeding tissue
spray bottle with water
pencils
black Sharpie Markers
scissors
markers
googly eyes

You will want to lay down some paper or towels over your work surface. This stuff will stain the table. I put down some pages torn from a magazine. I told the kids to rip shapes from the tissue paper and place around their white construction paper. You want it to be somewhat covered. When they were done, carefully spray the paper with water. We let this dry overnight. Next I gave the kids another piece of paper, and a pencil, and told the kids to design their own monsters. This was neat to see what they made. I had them cut this out, this will be used as a stencil. The next day, we removed all the tissue paper from our pages, and traced our own monster stencils with the black Sharpie marker.  We cut our monsters out and set to decorating them. I had googly eyes of all sizes, and markers of all different colors. D even got out a bingo stampers to give her monsters spots/chicken pox. These little guys are now hanging up next to our dinner table!

My tissue all laid out

After spraying it with water

D's designed monster

L's designed monster

My monster all traced and ready to be cut out

Our fun and scary monsters!

Earth Day crafts

We have been celebrating Earth day all week this week. We were lucky to have nice weather at the park earlier in the week. The group had a nice picnic lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grilled cheese, mini bagels and cream cheese, and then I made "earth" cupcakes. Of course I forgot to take a picture of those, but I was inspired by Rockabye Butterfly.  We did this really fun and easy crafts with the kids. Pinned from Teach Preschool.

Supplies needed:
white paper
paper plate
blue and green paint

How easy is that! Just 4 things!!!!  Because we were outside on a slightly windy day I went ahead and taped the paper to the table. I showed the kids how they got to drizzle the paint on the back of the paper plate, flip it over on the paper, and give it a little spin. They all loved it! And they turned out fantastic.

The next craft I did was with both kids on Saturday. Now we have done the coffee filter and marker thing before, but was inspired by this post on I can teach my child.  Both of my kids had a blast, and they always love to use water to spray their projects.

Supplies needed:
green and blue washable markers
coffee filters
spray bottle filled with water

Have the kids totally color in the filter with the markers, then spray down with water. I did lay down a flattened brown paper bag under our projects before coloring. After dry, I taped them to the inside of the front door. Nice and cheerful!

And lastly, I had picked up some bleeding tissue paper a few months back, but was unsure of what project to use it on. Inner child fun has used it multiple times, and it always looks so fun. So we decided to make an Earth with it!

Supplies needed:
blue and green bleeding tissue (yes, different then regular tissue paper)
white paper
spray bottle full of water
black construction paper
white paint
large bristle paint brush

I started out prepping the tissue paper but cutting it into squares. I also found a plate that worked with the size I wanted our Earth to be. I first traced it in pencil, then with black marker. I then showed the kids how to layer the tissue on the white paper. I sprayed my picture down with way too much water, after it dried most of my blue ink had bled to the outer ring of the whole paper. L just barely sprayed his down, just so everything was damp, and his turned out perfect. (D was too tired to participate with this one) While those were drying, I took the kids outside to splatter paint their outer space. I set a piece of black construction paper on the ground, and poured a bit of white paint in a cup. I told the kids they had to dip their brush in the paint and then flick it on the paper. We did discover that flicking the paint with your finger on the bristles worked better. We let everything dry over night, and then L cut it out and put it all together. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, I'll make sure to do that tomorrow.