Every week Arounna Khounnoraj posts a craft walkthrough on Bloesem Kids, they’re generally very kid focused and excellent for introducing different mediums to younger children. My son isn’t quite at a level to be able to do this yet, so this was entirely done by myself – I think I need to get my niece and nephew round for a day of art so I can thoroughly test all of the child related tuts that I have on my “to do” list.

All of Arounna’s tutorials can be found here. I’m sure you’ll see a couple more of these turn up on CraftBlog in the future, there are some awesome ideas!

Tutorial: #12 Water Colour Flowers
Level: Easy – great for kids!
Time taken: Half an hour
License: N/A
Materials Used: Canvas board, watercolours and a permanent marker.

Changes Made

• Arounna used watercolour paper, I couldn’t find mine anywhere so ended up using canvas board instead, this is more suited for acrylic work, so I think it affected the spread of the paint, I think the blobs would be more “blobby” if I’d have used watercolour paper as it would have saturated properly, but overall using canvas didn’t make a huge difference.
• I don’t have any india ink, in my first piece I used a fine sharpie to create the contrasting lines, it led to more of a sketchy effect which I wasn’t too keen on. For the second one I used a thick black permanent marker and it really made the colours pop out of the canvas, originally I think I was worried about making the lines too heavy and overwhelming but I think the thicker lines work really well.

Tips

• Let loose! The first piece I did I was fairly uptight that my paint was doing exactly what I wanted and that everything was going to look perfect, I think that’s a product of being a grown up though. Let your inner child come through and have fun instead of worrying that everything is precise.
• As I said above, don’t be worried about the heavy lines, the contrast is what makes this piece look so great.

I love the effect that you end up with for such a small amount of work, I could see a collection of these used to brighten up a hallway or even if done on a smaller scale to make very cute handmade greeting cards, I’m sure kids would be more interested in writing thank you cards to long lost relatives if they get to blob paint everywhere first!

You can see other people’s versions of this tut here.

If you would like your tutorial reviewed by someone on the CraftBlog team, please contact us with a link and brief description and we’ll find the person best suited to take it on!