A Watercolor Craft with the Grands

Looking for something to do over spring break with your children or grandchildren? This is a fun one, and one they can then share with others! Make bookmarks for others and use watercolor techniques.

I had seen a watercolor craft online and realized it was something I had never done with my grandchildren. I decided it was a nice relaxing activity, and if we watercolored bookmarks, we could share with our local nursing home. So when they came over yesterday, that's exactly what we did. 

The sentiments we wrote on each we deemed appropriate for the residents of the nursing home. It was a fun half-day activity as we did a watercolor wash on 8x10 paper, left them to dry and then ran errands and went to lunch. Always fun with my grand girls!

Got out all my supplies. Good use of my decorative scissors I've had on hand since teaching school. We also had a lot of leftover ribbons from other projects.

My grands usually help me with my blog. They took most of the pictures for this week's blog, including this one of supplies.

A watercolor wash on full-size paper. Then we cut into individual bookmarks.

Involved in the process.

You can see that even though our painting didn't make a lot of sense, turns out to be a nice design when cut into individual bookmarks.

Girls explored using a stifle technique.

Writing the sentiment. This one seems appropriate for a classmate.

Mounting on construction paper; punching a hole for the ribbon; affixing the ribbon.

Such a feeling of accomplishment when we stacked all our completed bookmarks.

We had fun with this craft. We tried a few different techniques including a stifle technique as well as a watercolor wash, all of which you can find online. We used colored markers to write our words of inspiration, and got out all my leftover ribbon to add to the bookmark. We eventually decided we could do these for our friends as well. They would kind of be like "kindness bookmarks" instead of kindness rocks. 

And as always seems to happen when I'm writing this blog, there was an article in Parade magazine by Lori Greiner. She makes uplifting posters for kids and schools, and you can get her wall decals for free. That inspired me for a summer craft for my granddaughters--we can make kindness posters using our watercolor techniques. Check it out:
www.lorigreiner.com/walldecals
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Pass the above web address on to your kids and grandkids so they can get the free posters for their school. I know I'm going to!

Another kids' craft from our house to yours!

As usual, I'll end with some points of inspiration:

"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed, that's all who ever have." Margaret Mead

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." Desmond Tutu