Kids Art: Winter Holiday Card

Salt sprinkled work, as well as watercolor plastic wrap are popular art activities at home. Kids do it on and off when they are in the mood and set their finished papers out for drying. I diligently collect them and save them in our "Specialty Papers" cubby for future use.


For this card, we composed 

1. salt-sprinkled conifers with corrugated trunks; 
2. White oil pastel for the foreground snow masking;
3. wintry cool background using our favorite chalk pastels;
4. dimensional snowfall dotted on using bead paint.

Items Used:

Salt sprinkled paper in green hues

Brown corrugated paper

Chalk pastels

White oil pastel

Card stock paper, cut to required finished card size

Scissors

Glue

White 3D paint or bead paint

Method:

Conifers: Cut triangles from salt sprinkled paper for the conifers; cut short proportionate tree trunks from corrugated paper; glue on two or three trees; allow to dry.

Foreground Snow: Use the white oil pastel to create a snowy foreground, as if the trees are in a bank of piled snow.White on white is hard to see, but in the right light, and after the background is in, it provides the visual satisfaction of a wintry earth.

Background Winter Magic: Use chalk pastels in deep purple and two other shades of darker blues to create the magical wintry night-ish background. Blend till smooth and gorgeous. Take care not to let the color into the foreground snow masked by oil pastels in the step above.

Optional Sealant: At this point, spray a sealant to fix the chalk pastel background. I use a clear acrylic spray fixative - just a few spritzes, not too much to soak the paper, but, enough to cover the chalk pastel background so it won't keep getting smudged when handling. Allow to dry completely.

Dimensional Snowfall: Use the white 3D paint or bead paint to dot the scene with falling snow. Allow to dry overnight.

Stamps: The kid then stamped some fun images on the inside of the card: snowflakes, snowman, gingerbread man, and penguin. And a "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" message.

Winter Poem: Much like the turkey poem we added to the Thanksgiving turkey card, this time we chose "I do not mind you, Winter Wind" by Jack Prelutsky as we had checked out his book "It's Snowing! It's Snowing!" from the library.

Other than showing the way I would do it, and walking him through the first card, I left the 6 year old alone to finish the twenty-odd cards he wanted to make and give away for his friends at school. He loved the project so much that he did it enthusiastically. I typed up and printed the poem and cut it up; he glued it inside each card quite diligently.

Now that the 9 year old is selective and makes only a handful of cards for just her closest friends (who also reciprocate in kind), she decides what sort of card she wants to make for her friend. Maybe Oggie will choose to make only a handful next year for his closest friends, or he might decide not to do anything at all... which is fine. For now, it is a lot of fun to watch them work.