Happy Halloween from a little Lightening McQueen

Happy Halloween everybody!  

Hope you have a wonderful and magical day!  

As promised, here are some photos of Chuck in his Lightening McQueen costume at a church party.
(And if you want to see my matching Mack costume, click here.)

(Did you see shoes?  Click here to see how I painted his Lightening McQueen Shoes.)

And here are a couple of photos showing how I made it. 

Painting Lightening McQueen Shoes

Here's a fun fact- In the past couple of months, I've watched the movie Cars probably twenty or so times.  By now, I know all the characters' names and I could probably recite 50 to 75 % of the movies' lines from memory.

Why this sudden and intense interest in cartoon vehicles?  Well, it's Chuck.  We're a Cars household because he just loves the movie.  If you ever visit our home, you'll probably find him either (1) racing around on his bike, pretending to be Lightening McQueen, or (2) playing with his toy cars.

This Halloween, Chuck's going to dress up as Lightening McQueen.  I thought it would be fun to try painting him some shoes to go along with his costume.  It was my first time painting shoes. Here's how they came out: 

At first I wanted to get white or red canvas shoes, but they only had black ones at Walmart. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.  They're super cute.  But, I'm not sure how long (or how well) the paint will last.... so the jury's still up about that.   I'll probably update this post in a couple of weeks to include some notes about wear and tear.... but for now here are some photos of my process in case you wanted to see what I did.

Materials:

• Canvas shoes
• Chalk
• Acrylic paint
• Thin paint brushes
• Pencils
• Paper
• Q-tip
• Paper towels
• Jar with water
• Tray to hold paint

1.  First I placed a piece of paper on top of my shoe and traced the top of the shoe to see how big to draw my images.  Then, I drew and cut out my Lightening Mcqueen.

2.  I briefly lamented not having white canvas shoes because I wasn't sure how to transfer my image to the shoes. (Seasoned crafters out there- do you know of a good way to do this?)  I ended up just tracing my image onto my shoe with sidewalk chalk (way too big, I know... but this was the smallest chalk I had) and sketching out the details.  (There's gotta be a better way, right?)

3.  I pulled out my paint and started painting my images.  After I filled in all the colors (see right shoe), I outlined my images using a pencil dipped into my black paint.  The black outline made my images much sharper and nicer to look at (see left shoe.)  Then, I just cleaned off my chalk marks with a wet q-tip.

And that's all!  Ka-chow!

Chuck's really enjoyed wearing these bad boys around town and I'm just glad that I got to craft something useful and cute.   

How are you getting ready for Halloween?  Happy crafting! 

Make your own "Paint with water" pages

While perusing the craft store for costume materials the other day, I saw some "paint with water" books.  As a kid I loved those things.  You pay a buck or two and then you got sheets and sheets of coloring pages with "paint pans" printed on the bottom of the page. It always blew my mind that I just needed a wet Q-tip to paint!  

So of course, that's when a light bulb went off in my mind.  Ding!  Sure, I could pay a could pay a couple of bucks, buy a book, and then relive some childhood memories.  But I figured I'd have even more fun putting on my DIY hat and making my own "paint with water" pages.

So, tada!  Here are my DIY "paint with water" pages.  Not going to lie, the store bought ones are certainly cheaper.  But, these ones are pretty groovy because they're customizable and sure to delight both the maker and the user.


Ready to make your own?  Let's get started!

Materials:

• Watercolor paper
• Scissors
• Sharpie marker
• Watercolor pencils
• Pencil sharpener
• Watercolor tubes

Directions: 

1.  Cut your watercolor paper into quarters.  Use your Sharpie marker to draw four rectangles on the bottom of your sheet.  These will hold your "paint" colors.  Then, use your Sharpie marker to doodle your images onto the paper.  (Or, you could leave the page blank too.) 

2.  Pull out your watercolor pencils.  Color the rectangles in with different colors.  For the best results, press hard and choose darker colors.

And that's it!  You now have blank canvases for artwork, coloring sheets, or fun activity sheets. (Come on, who doesn't love adding makeup to doodled faces?)

Or, you could turn the pages into fun cards or postcards.  Who wouldn't love receiving a super cute card that doubles as an outlet for creativity?   

To color in your pages, simply take a Q-tip (or paint brush), dip it in water, and then dip it into your "paint pans."  Voila.  Instant watercolor paint!

Don't have watercolor pencils?  No sweat.  You could also do the same thing with watercolor tubes.  (This idea was inspired by Creative With Kids.)  For these "paint with water" pages:

1. Cut your watercolor pages in half instead of quarters to give yourself more room to paint
2. Place tiny drops of paint on one side of your watercolor sheet
3. Let the paint dry for a couple of hours
4. Doodle a design with Sharpie if desired

Once again, you've got your very own portable palette of paint!  (These pages are a bit fancier than the previous ones because they hold more paint.)

Once again, all you need now is a paintbrush (or in my case, a Q-tip) to make instant artwork.

Happy crafting!