Thursday, September 5, 2013

Flower Watercolours

Over the summer I spent sometime browsing the net and finding
great ideas to try at the art table.  You can check out my Art Pinterest
board to see what ideas caught my attention.

One idea was from Learn~Play~Imagine.  She made watercolour
paint from flowers.  I’ve dyed eggs using different vegetables and
liked the idea of trying flowers.
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I’m not much of a flower gardener and have only weeded my flower
beds once this summer so I asked families to bring flowers in for this
art activity.
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We started by picking the blossoms off the stems and putting them
into ziplock bags.
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They really enjoyed that step, I think having the opportunity to pull
flowers apart when they are usually told to be gentle was liberating.

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A bonus while picking apart the blossoms was finding this little slug. 
He eventually escaped, I hope it's okay.

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Back to the baggies, we added hot water to the bag and squeezed the air
out before sealing.  The children used rollers or their hands to squish
and squeeze the colour out of the blossoms.
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We had some success.  If I had read her blog again last night I would have
learned that if we had left the flowers to soak for a period of time our
success may have been greater.
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The flower that did create the best paint was a purple Dahlia.
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Regardless of the colour (or lack of it) we created, the families enjoyed
the whole process.

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   We’ve talked about trying it again with vegetables.