Father’s Day craft: letter painting with masking tape
Father’s Day gifts are always more challenging then mom’s: no flowers, no glitter, no pretty sweet little things… I personally find any woman easier to find or make a gift then almost any man. And when it comes to Dad… our very own dear Dad!.. We need something sweet, cute and yet manly. And something that can be done by kids. This project totally fits the bill. Supplies: – 3 little canvases, I got a set of three 4 x 6 inches at Michaels. – acrylic paints. You can get away using regular, but acrylic dries faster, doesn’t leak, and so much easier to work with for this project! – synthetic brushes Natural brushes work better with oil paints. Synthetic ones, especially ¼ inch square ones, would work very nicely for this one. – masking tape or painter’s tape, around ¼ inch or as thick as you want your letters to be. Any. Lowes has it, Home Depot has it. Avoid dollar store ones – doesn’t stick as snug and paint may leak underneath. – a piece of aluminum foil .. or whatever you use for palette to mix colors. We use regular aluminum foil – inexpensive and easy. – a couple of kids They’ll do the “heavy lifting in this project: they’ll get to do the fun stuff! Directions 1. Start out with the kids. I have three, so each got his own canvas. Each one will spell out one letter (“D “A “D). I you have five – you can do “DADDY. If you have two, you can do one of the letters yourself. Or you can spell out your dad’s name, if you prefer! 2. Pick three colors. I let each kid pick one color. Why just one? When they finish their project, we’d hang it on a wall: picking just three colors for the project will make each canvas relate to each other.3. First kids the whole paint with the color of their choice. The whole canvas. Top to bottom, side to side. Let the canvas dry. Acrylics dry very fast, no worries here.
4. Then the masking/painter’s tape fun begins: tear off pieces of painter’s tape and let kids form letters with it. A word of advice: make letters as simple as possible. I tried helping them to make one of the letters nice and fancy – it became totally unreadable in the end. Keep it simple. Trace the masking tape with your finger to make sure it adheres well, no air pockets on the sides for the paint to leak into.
6. Each of my boys covered the canvas with a second layer of paint. Again: top to bottom, side to side. Including the masking tape – if you pressed it nicely, then the letters are totally safe underneath. They were layering one color on top of the other, mixing them right on the canvases, experimenting and creating a fun texture along the way.
7. Let it dry. A little, it doesn’t even have to dry completely for you to remove the tape. Ahh, the magical feeling, when the layer of tape (and color!) is peeled off and another one peels through! The kids were fascinated.
And the letters came out quite nicely!
