Getting back to a year of lightness and freedom includes adding daily creativity projects of some sort to our day.

With no rigidity.

Because Isaiah. Boy+sensory processing disorder+boy+wacko= minute amounts of tolerance for structured art activities that take longer than 10 minutes.

So. Textured paper. I decided that I’d like to do some art projects this year that involve using paper as a decorative component and the best way to do that is to create our own textured paper.

Also, delayed gratification is a complete unknown in this house. So learning that can only be good.

And, cutting up a creation? Talk about trauma. This is a lesson in letting go.

So.

Watercolor paper and tempera paints worked great for us.

We tried 4 styles of textured paper. Spirals, sponging, stripes and wax resist.

After spiral and a little sponging Isaiah asked if he could “just paint.” Unlike the olden days I said sure!

First he painted me as a big fat purple monster. That was awesome.

Then he painted a beautiful landscape with bushes and clouds.

I finished the rest of the textured paper and set it to dry.

I have some ideas of what we will do with it, maybe some weaving or making a pretty garland. You’ll have to come back to see.

Here’s how we did what we did:

Spirals dip a dry brush with a flat head in your paint. Starting from the inside create a spiral until the paint has run out on the brush. Any size will work.

Sponging I have lots of cut up sponges from other projects, so we used a small piece and dipped it in the paint sponging until it began to fade and then dipping again. We covered the whole piece of paper and let it dry and then did another color on top.

Stripes choose 2 colors that blend well I used yellow and red, but blue and yellow or blue and green might be nice. I started with yellow stripes going one direction trying to have just enough paint on a wide flat brush to make it all the way across. Then while the paint is still wet add a little bit of the second color to the first color so the next set of stripes is a blend without being mixed. After that set make diagonal lines with the two colors mixed.

Wax Resist take a crayon and rub it on its side very hard all over the piece of paper. Then water down some paint and do a very thin wash over the whole page. Where the wax is the paint won’t stick. (This did not work so well for us. It might be because we didn’t rub hard enough, or maybe because we used such a heavy watercolor paper. Either way, if I get it right I will share that here)