Marbled eggs

Today we got the paints out, I'll admit I haven't had the paints out for one whole year which I am quite ashamed to admit.

Alex LOVED it and I felt quite bad I hadn't done anything like this with him for that period of time, the things I would have done had I had not felt so ill during my pregnancy last year :( feel like he's really missed out and I didn't give him the attention he needed.

Anyway...

I chopped one side of the cereal box off to make a deep tray, placed paper into it and blobbed paint randomly on the paper. We then put some marbles in the box, Alex was first unsure of what to do but soon got the hang of it and loved making lots of patterns.

This first attempt was so wet with paint I placed another piece of paper on top to make a print of it too!

Then after we used the marbles that were covered in paint on a plain piece of paper without any added paint which gave really good patterns and not too thick and gloopy. 

Then we put the finger paints to good use, Alex wanted to make lots of lines with them rather than printing. 

We have some great painting tools from ELC, he really liked the circle stamper-as you can see he was moving fast!

Who needs finger prints when you can use your whole hand?

Making lots of 'dots.

Messy hands. 

We had a great time, I really liked using marbles and actually that part of the painting was not too messy if you wanted to try it. 

We will be cutting the paper into egg shapes tomorrow and sticking them onto cards to give to the Grandparents tomorrow. We couldn't do it tonight as the paint was still so wet at 7pm and Alex was in bed way before then as he was so tired!

So look out for the finished results tomorrow!

UPDATED:

Linking up with the fab new linky by Jennie from Edspire in memory of Matilda Mae, there are some great ideas, so head on over!

Our final cards can be found on some of our later post which have some better photos of painting results!

                                   

Shaving foam Easter egg marbling

Last Easter I grabbed a load of craft supplies and put them outside for me and Alex to do some marbling for our Easter cards. It was probably the last messy thing I did with him before feeling the side effects of pregnancy-how awful it has taken a year for me to get back into crafting with him again. :( I never got around to blogging about it so I am using the photos from last year. I cannot believe we were out in shorts and t-shirts outside in the sun the same time last year-really hoping spring kicks in soon!

Marbling with shaving foam is incredibly easy and leaves great results.
1.You need some sort of tray to squirt out and cover with shaving foam, then use either food colouring and/or paint and blob either one side or all over (I think if I remember correctly it worked much better with the paints).

2. Using pencils/paint brushes/cardboard swirl patterns into the shaving foam and paint mixture creating wonderful patterns.

3. Once you are happy with the patterns place a piece of paper (we found normal white printing paper worked best) on top and lift it up carefully, it might look like a mess now.

4. Use a strong long piece of cardboard or ruler and scrape the shaving foam mixture off the paper.

5. Leave to dry you should be left with something looking like this...

I then cut the paper into egg shapes, Alex also had some practise at cutting with his scissors too, I was very impressed at his co-ordination doing so.

We then stuck these onto some card, I had picked up some Easter foam shapes from ELC  that Alex stuck on too, unfortunately I didn't take a photo of these. 

This was Alex after doing the marbling last year, he wanted to just paint his hands and do hand prints!