Toilet Paper Still Life, & Other Fun Project Ideas!

My completed piece! Charcoal, marker, watercolor, acrylic, perler beads, pastel, collage, colored pencil and pencil.

I know, I haven't blogged here in a while! But now that nobody on the planet is holding events due to COVID-19, my face painting business has come to a screeching halt, which means I have some more time to share fun ideas with YOU, in between playing tech support for my boys' online schooling!

I thought I'd start with some fun projects I've been doing with my boys since we've started staying home a couple weeks ago!

I took the opportunity one day to have a little still life art lesson with my boys. They say art imitates life, so I figured, what better subject matter for the current times than...a roll of toilet paper?!



I put one of our priceless, coveted rolls of toilet paper on a pedestal on the kitchen table. (Don't worry, no TP was harmed or wasted in the making of this project!)

I cut up pieces of paper into 4" squares, which is...you guessed it...exactly the size of a sheet of toilet paper! Our goal was to create 9 renderings of a toilet paper roll, using 9 different mediums.  So, I cut up squares of drawing paper, watercolor paper, marker paper, and cardboard. I think the small paper size made this more fun and less intimidating....less space to fill so that they were motivated enough to keep doing more, and spreading it out over a couple days, we had a nice grid of 9 in the end.

This was really fun for me, too! My finished product you can see up above, the first pic in this post. Do this along WITH your kids! You might be surprised how much fun you'll have too!

Once we were done I spray mounted them on a piece of poster board. Don't they look cool in a nice, square grid? Kindof Andy Warhol-esque.

Here are some ideas for different mediums you can try:

• Markers
• Colored Pencils
• Crayons
• Watercolor paint
• Acrylic paint
• Oil paint
• Pencil
• Charcoal
• Pastels
• Collage/paper
• Ink/pens
• Perler beads

For me it was really fun to dig out some of my art supplies that I haven't used since college! The boys learned about perspective, how circles turn into ellipses when viewed at an angle, shading cyllinders, and how to use fun tools they haven't used like kneaded erasers, eraser shields, different

Another thing we did last week was Perler Beads!! We have tons of these things and Sam had the great idea that we make honeycomb!! This is an easy way to get everyone involved in making one, larger project...since we have a couple bead trays in hexagon shapes, two of us can be making honeycomb cells at any given time. 

I made some parts for a bee while the boys did some comb too! This kept us busy for a whole day, and then some....I put them away when interest started to fade. We can easily get them back out another day and add on to our comb! Eventually I may glue them together to a board!

My boys are 10 and 12. If yours are too little for this kind of thing, here are a couple more fun ideas I saw on Facebook recently....

Even BABIES can create a masterpiece! Make sure you put something good underneath to protect your floor....sandwich some canvas or paper with blobs of acrylic on top, topped with some plastic wrap. What a fun idea!!

I loved this idea for combining art with enjoying a sunny day outside!

What kind of art projects are you and your kids doing to keep busy and have fun? Share in the comments!!