valentine tree artwork~ a tutorial

i was pulling out our valentine decorations today and i came across the valentine tree artwork that the girls made last year...

i love to do artwork with them... not too many days go by over here where there isn't something being drawn, painted, colored, etc...

it makes them happy and that makes me happy...

last year, i saw this idea for these valentine trees on pinterest... the pin led me to the blog scrumdilly-do! and this post where they made valentine trees... {thanks for the fun idea scrumdilly-do :)}

we decided to do a version of them with some supplies we had on hand...

 ~watercolor paper

~brown acrylic craft paint {slightly watered down}

 ~ shades of red acrylic craft paint

 ~ shades of pink acrylic craft paint

 ~potato {carved into a polka dot stamper... you can also use the small, foam circle brushes from your local craft store... i was fresh out of those so we improvised with the potato :)}

~straw

~piece of paper with a large heart shape cut from the center of it {to be used as a template for the tree top}

how we made them:

step one... take your water color paper and add a small amount of watered down brown acrylic paint to the bottom of the page... take the straw and blow the watered paint up the paper... {it's important to tell the children to only blow on the straw... make sure that they know not to suck in}... move the straw to different areas as the trunk of your valentine tree works its way up the paper... go up the page as far as you'd like with the trunk but make sure you leave room for the heart shaped tree top... {your kids will love how neat the paint spreads and branches out}...

{let your trunks completely dry before moving on to step 2...}

step two...  get your red and pink acrylic craft paint ready...

step three... {this part can be done one of two ways}... you can help your child by holding the open heart shape template over their tree trunk paper or you can tape the template paper and tree trunk papers down... dip the polka dot carved potato stamper {or small, foam circle brush} into the pink and red paints and begin filling in the template... random pink and red polka dots... have them stamp up and down... here and there... until the heart is complete...

the picture above shows marina with our hand made polka dot stamp from a potato... she had a lot of fun with this and thought it was really neat to be using a potato instead of a paintbrush...

step four... lift up the template slowly {help the child with this step} and you'll have something like what's pictured below...

{maizie's finished valentine tree}

{marina's finished valentine tree}

allow them to completely dry...

and be sure to take a cute pic of them proudly holding their paintings...

they really enjoyed making these... and i really enjoyed framing them as valentine artwork to display in the month of february...

have a happy day~
angie