What do you get when you put string, paint, and paper together? The first answer: A MESS. The second answer: THIS CRAFT!
Over winter break, I finally took the dive and ordered my toddler some paint. Before that, I really wasn’t trying to deprive her of the wonderful feeling of paint, I just wanted to make sure I could trust her not to lick it. Or feed it to the dog. (So far, she’s done neither of this things. Keywords: so far.)
Anywho, as I was thinking of all the ways we could use our paint, I thought about using string to print random loops on paper, which then made me think of all the swirling lines that ice skaters make gliding across the ice. The loops were really fun to make, although, I do confess that probably my favorite part of this was our dog in ice skates.
Materials
- Paper (white, light blue, green)
- String
- Blue washable paint
- Paper Plate
- Marker
- Colored Pencils
- Scissors
- Glue
The String + Paint Part
Start off by cutting a piece of string (long enough so that when you place it on the paper, it will be able to create loops). Then, pour some blue paint on a plate and thin it out with a little bit of water. Next, coat most of the string with the paint. The super messy way would be to do this with your fingers, but we (aka Mommy) decided to use a spoon to do this instead. We put the string in the paint, gently placed the spoon over one part of it, and then pulled the string through. After that, paint/loop away on the blue piece of paper!
The Skaters
While you let the “skating rink” dry, you can tag team the little skaters like we did (Mommy drew while Toddler only wanted to color one of the three skaters, haha!) or you and your kids could each draw one of your own! Once you’re done drawing and coloring your characters, cut them out.
The Putting it Together Part
Once your skating rink is dry, cut it in whatever shape you want (i.e. an oval, rectangle, or blob, like we did).
And last but not least, glue everything down and watching your ice skating rink come to life! We glued our ice skating rink onto a white piece of paper (for the snow), added some trees made out of green scrap paper triangles, and finally put those skaters on the ice rink where fit right in.
The tiny one. 
Dwight looking very sophisticated in his green scarf. 
I would never look this graceful on the ice in real life. 
As always, I hope you and your kids enjoy making this craft together! We definitely did and now my toddler can’t get enough of paint, so be on the look out for more paint projects… 🙂 Thanks so much again for taking the time check out my blog. It truly means more than you know!
Happy crafting and music-making!
– Hannah