2...4...6...Art Party!
Summer is crazy and the number of birthdays is even more crazy. So we have one big birthday party for all three kids together. This year we had an art party at the local park. The kids squirt painted t-shirts and the adults became vintage vandals, re-painting some fabulous thrift store finds.
Squirt Shirts. We put the names of all the kids on white t-shirts with heat press vinyl. Hung all the shirts on a clothes line and let them spray the shirts with tie-dye from dollar store squirt bottles. We tried squirt guns first, but that was a disaster. So glad we practiced this with Father's Day shirts the week before. Cheap squirt guns leak. They leak badly. Leaking tie-dye liquid was not an option for the park or all over the kiddos. The squirt bottles worked out great. They held more liquid and we were able to control the spray better than a gun. They did clog a few times. So if you try this, have a few bottles on hand with just water to clear out the sprayers that get a clog. We either needed to dissolve the dye powder better or thin it out a bit more to possibly prevent the clogging. Even with that little hiccup the kids had a blast adding color to their very own shirts!
Vintage Vandals. You see them at garage sale and thrift stores every where; old paintings. At one time they had significant meaning to the artist or person who had the art hanging on their wall. Once they make it to the thrift store shelves they are fair game for an upgrade. We collected a good variety of landscape, still life and portrait art from local thrift stores and supplied everyone with the goods. Acrylic paint, brushes, google eyes, stencils, pencils and tape. Their mission was to turn their thrift store find into a new beautiful work of art. Some chose to add characters into their paintings, others chose to tape off areas to make words or stripes across their work of art. Everyone, and I mean everyone, dove right in and did a wonderful job with their project.
