Contact Paper Prints

mmmm... particles

So, my son isn't particularly creative yet. It's something I'm eagerly waiting for, but I don't pressure him. He'd rather feel the flour we're using for salt dough, or dump it out so he can watch it falling. And that's fine! Maybe he'll study physics like almost all my relatives did. But yours truly went to art school. And I'm beside myself wanting to make things with him instead of just watching him destroy whatever I make for him. So I'm always looking for ways to get some sort of memento or intentional looking something out of these adventures. I also have this grand plan to help him understand the ideas of holidays and traditions by showing him what we've made the years before. We can go through our projects together as part of our celebration. And this was such a fun and easy thing to do! I'm really looking forward to telling him about his Holi footprints next year!

You'll need scissors, an empty picture frame with removable glass pane, and glass cleaner. The first step is to remove the glass from the frame and clean both sides thoroughly, using something fairly lint-free. Hang onto your cloth or whatever for the next step. I used alcohol, because it just happened to be there. You want something that will get all the smudges and fingerprints off, so that the contact paper can stick easily and you have a nice, clean, smudge-free end product.

Next, find the piece of the contact paper you want to save. I think this would work best with a lot of negative space, so more of the paper can adhere to the glass. Using your rag to hold the glass so you don't smudge it again, carefully place your glass over your image. It's also a good time to push it into place, burnishing it and pressing with the cloth so the contact paper sticks. This makes cutting it out a great deal easier.

Cut out carefully. Try to pay attention to the edge of the glass so you don't accidentally detach your contact paper too much.

Once it's free of the larger sheet, trim as necessary and press down any edges that may have lifted. It doesn't have to be super neat unless you choose not to frame it. These would be pretty cool as floating prints too!

Now reassemble your frame and you're done! I don't know how long the chalk powder will cling, but I guess we'll find out! I bet this will work with any flattish contact paper collage. Enjoy!

A Festival of Colors...

...Mostly on our pants. We celebrated Holi this week. Holi is a Hindu festival, celebrated by flinging lots of brightly colored powders all over your friends. Mom has always loved the pictures of the celebrants and decided this was right up our alley. And because she is an equal opportunity partier, she shoe-horned some early Easter fun too...






Awesome idea, Mom.













First things first, we liberated the eggs.


















We're all about dumping.















The aftermath...

















This was so much fun that we did it again the next day. We obviously couldn't get any authentic Holi powders and the recipes I found for making them at home were pretty time intensive. We might do that next time, but as usual, this time Mom had to be resourceful. The first day, we used some materials we happened to have. Turmeric worked brilliantly for gold. The unsatisfyingly grayish blue was made mixing food coloring and flour. Green and red were powdered jello, which were too pale, although they did smell interesting. On day two, we hit a winner: grated sidewalk chalk.



Sometimes, Mom is brilliant. Special thanks to GM Kaki for the grater:


 

We borrowed an idea from another blog Mom's been following, called, Play Create Explore. Jessie has some really amazing ideas for toddler crafts! We took some regular old contact paper and taped it sticky side up to our tarp.










DUMP!


















As usual, the feet must be involved.



















A lot.













As you might notice in the video, he was having a hard time opening the smaller eggs. He started handing them to Mom to open, who would carefully hand them back for inspection.















Whereupon he dumped it in his face...

this is why Mom prefers non-toxic chalk

 

 

Update!
Yes, the contact paper footprints stick to glass! Here are instructions if anyone wants to try it: http://aiitx.blogspot.com/2012/03/contact-paper-prints.html