Mother's Day Gifts: Children's Art

If you've followed me for any amount of time, you know that my mom passed away seven years ago.  I know that not only would she have loved being a grandma, but she would have been an amazing one and she was an amazing mother.  Naturally, the cemetery is a stop for us on Mother's Day, but rather than just do flowers, I still try to do something a little special and heartfelt in honor of her and something that shows her that my daughter is thinking of "Grandma Angel".  When I was painting these a couple of weeks ago, I got brave and let my daughter play with the paints and it resulted in some artwork that I fell in love with and immediately placed on the wall in our living room.  And then the wheels started turning...why not share some of that with my mom in the form of a pot for her flowers?

The "picture" is just painted on one of the same 8x10 boards I used for the recipe stand.  I normally would have used something thinner (these are about an inch thick), maybe even a canvas, but it was an impromptu project and this was an old craft fail I had laying around and was already painted white.  If you want a stand-alone piece, you could add the finial to the top, and maybe even a painted candlestick to the bottom, like the recipe stand.  I've left mine like this because it hangs on the wall.

For the pot, I started with a coat of  white paint (just flat house paint) so her art would stand out.  And if you follow me on Facebook, you've seen this, but I have to share that I set out the paints, went in the other room to grab something, and walked in to find that my two year old knows how to open a can of paint.  She wasn't just trying, she had it open! Proud and terrified all at the same time!

The first project taught me that trying to keep a two year old from dipping the same brush in all of my paints is next to impossible, so I laid out all of her supplies, gave her a separate brush for each paint, and let her go to town.

But since the attention span of a two-year-old is similar to that of a goldfish--as you can see by her climbing out of her chair for the bajillionth time...

...I finally gave up and just told her to stick her fingers in and have at it

These little pieces of art end up so sweet and I truly think it's a gift any mother or grandmother would LOVE.

Linking At:

Whipperberry / Tatertots & Jello / Too Much Time on My Hands / 30 Handmade Days / I Heart Naptime / Positively Splendid