I honestly wasn’t sure if I should put this one under “DIY” or “Kid’s Crafts” – it’s literally the SIMPLEST paint project you’ve ever done but the results are super-sophisticated! Who knew that balloons – yeah, the ones that are lying loose on the bottom of your junk drawer, leftover from a long ago birthday party – could create such fantastic and professional looking texture? Talk about trash-to-treasure art! We did this with a group of 10 kids, 9 and 10 year olds, and it was a big hit.
I love crafts that use all the stuff lying around your house and this one fits the bill! If you don’t want to bother with buying anything at all, you can make a square design rather than circles, and you can do it with regular masking tape. But if you’re the type that would rather just buy all the supplies from a list that is handed to you on a silver platter, here’s what you’ll need:
To make this craft impossibly-there’s-no-way-to-botch-this easy, we used 2” round labels as stencils. Some of them come with a split down the middle to make the actual labels easier to peel off, so you have to be careful when you line them up on your canvas.
Cut up the sheet of labels so you have each label – and its surrounding trim – on its own square. Stick each of the “stencils” (the outside part, not the label part) onto your canvas, arranging them however you like (we did a grid of 3 rows of 3). Save the labels themselves for some other project.
Make sure to press the stencils down well to minimize paint from sneaking underneath (although as always, a little sneakiness adds to the handmade charm).
You can use masking tape or painters tape to tape up the areas of canvas that don’t have the stencil to cover them. We skipped this part, and the result was that when we pressed down the balloon too hard, the paint went past the stencil onto the part of the canvas that was supposed to be white. Then we had to wait for the paint to dry, and paint the messed up parts over with white – annoying.
Choose a good color scheme – a lot of the kids in my group chose purples, blues, and pinks. We found that three colors to a splotch looked great. Squirt the 3 colors onto your palate right near each other, even overlapping a little.
Blow up your balloon to about 4” in diameter – it’s easier to work with if it’s not too big. Dip the balloon into the paint, and then press down into one of the stencils on your canvas. You can rotate and squish the balloon just a tad when you’re pressing it down on the canvas to swirl the colors, but don’t do that too much or you’ll end up just blending the tie dye into one un-eyecatching mush. Lift up the balloon and enjoy that gorgeous texture!
Wipe the balloon with a paper towel if you want to switch colors.
Once you’ve splotched all your circles, wait for the paint to dry and then peel off the stencils and the tape (if you used). In the picture below, you can see the smudged paint outside of the stencils that we had to clean off and paint over once the paint dried. Hence my recommendation to cover the outside areas with masking tape.
Use a fine tipped black marker to write any message or words that you’d like in a wide, signature style script.