My little artist.

Ethan loves to do crafts and colour. He's been pretty good with his crayons since we gave them to him at 18 months of age, respecting that crayons stay at the table when you want to get up and roam around. Maybe it's because Parker is a second child, and doesn't have my undivided attention, but he is a completely different beast when it comes to art supplies.

It seems Playdoh, and crayons are a 5th food group  for my toddler. I tried giving him pencil crayons, but he'd chew on the tips. I tried markers, only to discover that a red Crayola felt tip, one chewed, horrifically resembles blood when oozing from the mouth of a child. He's got a thing for seed beads too; after dumping a tube of them all over my craftroom floor, he started chomping on them. As I scrambled to get them contained and cleaned up, he was climbing over me like a madman trying to get more to shove in his mouth. Needless to say diaper changes were interesting in the days following.


Next came the experimentation with drawing on things other than paper. His hands, face, beloved stuffed lamb Gordon, wall, toy shelves, kiddie table and chairs have all served as canvases at some point or another. Then came the couch- our BRAND NEW, dark grey plush corduroy sectional.

I saw him with the yellow finger paint.
I removed it from him.
I placed it back on the table in the craftroom then closed and locked the door.
How the following events occured I have no clue!

I told both boys  to play for a minute while I ran upstairs to get their things together so we could go meet friends for lunch. I returned not 3 minutes later to find Parker with yellow paint on his shirt and jeans. Thinking it had occured earlier,  I started to take measures to get him changed- then I noticed paint on the floor. Panic started to set in as I scanned the room for the paint jar. All I could see from where I was standing was the back of the couch dividing the playroom. I took slow deliberate steps towards it and then got to the other side petrified at what I might find... Yellow hand prints and blobs of finger paint were splattered over the ENTIRE seating area. Yellow hand prints on the seat of the lazyboy chair, (and days later I discovered) yellow paint all over the canister of my vacuum cleaner.

I'm really glad the damage to everything was minimal ( because I caught him quickly), and cleaned up relatively easily ( did I mention we were still waiting for the stain treatment for the couch?) I am thankful that I've invested in non-toxic, washable, kid friendly crafting products, and even secretly hopeful that this behavior might indicate a bit of creative genius or something.

With that being said, here's this week's layout for Practical Scrappers showcasing another creative endeavor by Parker.

The challenge this week was embossing. I let Parker have my Versamark pen, and the background sheet of Basic Grey paper. once he had scribbled his thing, I quickly dusted it with American Crafts embossing powder in Denim, and heat set.  I journalled in sections with a Zig embossing pen, and embossed it with a detail black powder by Stampendous. I added a  little spritz of Glimmer Mist, clear dew drops and pebbles, then the AC Thickers for my title.

I plan to take some direction from my 21 month old and experiment a little bit more with my supplies; hopefully the outcome will be just as spontaneous but more controlled.

Happy Crafting!
Erin