Monday, February 15, 2010

Snow Paint

It turns out that snow just doesn't come in enough garish colors to suit us, so......we painted it.

You will need:
  • spray bottles (I bought small spray bottles brand-new from The Container Store the last time we went through St. Louis, just to have on hand for art projects like this)
  • tap water
  • liquid food coloring (not the professional-quality food coloring that you use for, you know, food, but the cheap-o McCormick stuff, which is really good for crafts)

Fill the spray bottles each about 4/5 full of tap water, then add at least 10 drops of food coloring to each bottle. Darker, more vivid colors will show up better in the snow than lighter colors or pastels will. I don't recommend that you use yellow at all, unless you want to sneak over in the night and do a neighbor's yard.

Before I give the spray bottles to the girls to use, I usually prime them by spraying them into the sink and I adjust the spray to a sort of concentrated mist.

And then, you spray!Since it continued to snow all day, most of our designs were eventually covered up, but it did turn us, for a while, once again into the yard that people stop and stare at (nude Jackson Pollack painting and front yard street-adjacent vegetable gardens also encourage that sort of behavior, we've found):There was ample snow stomping-- --and other assorted snow frolicking--

--yesterday, but although the public schools are having a Snow Day today, it is business as usual at Montessori. I'll be spending a third afternoon there working with the preschoolers and kindergartners on a decoupage project, but there are pinto beans in the crockpot, so my plan is to take the littles to the public library for a couple of hours after school.

Perhaps I can get some writing done there?

2 comments:

cake said...

we, your neighbors, saw the snow paint, on the way to the park. we stopped and gawked. cosmo wanted to know how you do it. now i know. thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing your photos. I hope you don't mind me posting one at www.juliecantrell.com I'll be sure to link to you and credit you. Cheers, j