Clare, from Leicester in the UK, has made some lovely wall art with her family. Fantastic! Read on…
What did you do?
Brighten up your walls and showcase their creativity đ„°
Things you will need….
- Various frames, multiple sizes.
- Several pieces of artwork. This can be paintings, drawings, cut and stick masterpieces, anything you treasure that has been lovingly made by your little ones!
- Command strips or something to secure the artwork to the wall.
- Wall art sticker decal of your choice (widely available online).
- Salt Dough – see recipe below- and deep frame. We used a memory box frame.
- Superglue.
We wanted to brighten up our plain walls so we decided to make a feature wall out of some of their paintings and our recent âLockDown Handprintsâ salt dough creation.
The paintings were put in various different frames to give a gallery type look. My daughters even painted a couple of them directly onto canvas. This included one if there hand and footprints in all different colours (messy but fun!)
A lot of people have asked how we did our dough as many have cracked or been too thick to frame.
For the dough we used 250g Plain Flour, 125g Salt and 125ml of water, plus a little extra water to help get it to the right consistency after mixing.
Once all mixed together and rolled out about 1/4 inch thickness we all added our handprints.
Once complete I baked in the oven for around 5 hours on a 50 degree heat.
I painted the handprints using my daughters poster paints. It took 3 coats over 3 evenings.
Once completely dry I sprayed with a polyurethane spray to seal it. After 24 hours it can be mounted in the frame using superglue. After another 24 hours it should be fine to hang on the wall. We used a wall sticker decal to complete the wall and bring all of the artwork together. The one we chose was a quote by Picasso that reads âall children are artistsâ. I simply love this quote but many others are available that would look lovely.
Our salt dough curled up at the edges making the surface uneven. This makes it very difficult to fix to the frame. We used blue tack to even it out and in some parts glued the blue tack to the frame to help secure it. Otherwise, the glue wouldnât be all around the surface and it could fall off of the mount.
Also take your time with the wall art decals, they can be a bit fiddly but as long as you remove the front film very slowly after following the instructions youâll be fine!
Do you have any more projects lined up?
My next project is to make a little seedling đ± growing area in our garden for my daughters to grow their own herbs and plants.
Tell us a bit about ourselves…
My name is Clare (37) and my husband Mark (39) and I have 2 beautiful daughters Ella (6) and Aria (3). We are both from the UK and live in Leicester in the Midlands.
How are you finding being housebound with kids so far?
I have loved spending the time with my family as both my husband and I work so we are not usually together anywhere near this much! Having said that it is also really difficult trying to juggle working from home, homeschooling my eldest and looking after my youngest daughter!
Any tips to help people when they are housebound with kids?
Like anyone, we have our good days and our not so good days. I just tell myself that everyone is in the same boat and this will get better! The main thing is not to beat yourself up about having a not so productive day….sometimes your body and mind needs that time to recharge for the next day.
It is impossible to work from home effectively, be the perfect mum and the best teacher all at once! It took me a while to work this out… đ
Tell us what you think about the Housebound with Kids Facebook community. How has it helped you?
There are lots of good ideas to help families plan activities and generally help inspire others. I love looking at what other people are doing and have used many ideas that we have seen on sites like this to create special Lockdown memories with my family.
What else could Housebound with Kids do to help more?
Just continue what you are doing â€ïž
