One Boy's Trash is Another Boy's Treasure #craft #art #paint #mixedmedia

My next art | craft post is up on ParentSavvy. I'm really excited to share the steps of this one.

There are 3 main things you need for this:

1. Heavy Structure Gel
2. A Masonite Canvas
3. Light Weight Junk You Will Turn to Treasure

I was so happy! My work gave me a $5 coupon to use at Blick Art Supplies. I found Winsor & Newton Heavy Structure Gel on clearance. It was $7. I had my teacher's discount on top of that. It was pennies.

We had canvas laying around.

Isaak has a lot of of junk that he wanted to turn to treasure. 

Screens

Washers and Other Things

Rubber Bits and Rusted Metal

Rainbow Loom - Not Really Junk, but We Used Them
We Also Used String

A Spoon to Apply the Medium, a Pen or Something to Draw on the Junk to Cut Them Out, Scissors to Cut the Junk

You May Use a Paint Brush, or Foam Brush (Optional)

You May Use Paint or Sand (Optional)

Turning the Trash to Treasure

Figure out what you want to stand out, how things will look on the canvas, and if there's any add on things you'll use before you get started.

We kind of had it figured out here. We decided to make the white mesh the biggest thing on the page, also known as the focal point.

Using Heavy Structure Gel:

Once it was all laid out we started to use the gel. Important use something you can wipe off to apply it. We used a spoon. You can use a fork, a palette knife, or even a plastic comb if you wanted to. It holds it's shape really well, so a fork or comb might be interesting. You'll get lots of lines.

Apply it to build it up on things that have recessed areas. Everything else can just be stuck into it.

We lifted the screen up to re position it. The gel held the texture! It dries a lot faster than I thought. Not so fast that you can't re position things, but I was expecting hours of drying time because it's thick. Nope! More like 20 min. When it dries, things are down for good!

We could have stopped here:

The little circles are Rainbow Looms.

But decided it needed something that would make one thing travel to something else. I told Isaak, "It looks like a Thomas train set with all the buildings, but no track.

We added string:

We could have stopped here:

We Chose to Paint it!

Gold and Silver went on! Isaak sprinkled sand in the wet paint in areas.

Blobs of silver paint went inside the Rainbow Loom circles.

It's Finished!

I would have worked on it more to add reds and teals to enhance the metal look, but Isaak hit his limit. I think it looks cool. Seriously a monkey could have done it with us.

It can go vertical or horizontal. Which way would you put it?

Trinkets

Isaak love to collect junk trinkets.

This last weekend I had mountains of laundry to do. I had a mission I was going to try and wash all the bedding. It got done!

In the washer I found metal parts!

I knew the washer wasn't broken. It was the contents in Isaak's pockets.

 What's the craziest thing you've found in the wash?

Early 90s Flip Hairbrush

Grandma and Grandpa Spiehs like to clean and give us the stuff they don't want. A few weeks ago they gave the boys both a flip brush by Clinique. Luckily they had two. I think there might of been some fighting otherwise.

Grandma (Mom to me) used to get every Clinique bonus package there was. I imagine this flip brush was in one of the bonus packages.

The boys insist on using their flip brushes and looking in their flip mirror. Mica brushes his hair even though there is hardly any hair to brush.


What's one man's junk is another man's treasure! :)

Silver Buckets

• I have three metal bucket's that are smaller then an ice bucket. They've just been sitting up in our linen closet for years.
• I decided to take them out of the closet, and gave two of them to Isaak. His newest love is filling up any container or bag with small toys, dumping it and filling it back up. Two year old's are funny!

• I handed them over to my little guy, and he looked at me like it was Christmas time. :) He has big eyes anyhow, and they just seemed to grow even bigger. 
• Right away he ran into his brother Mica's room to gather toy cars to put into one of the buckets. Then he ran into his own room to get a stuffed puppy to cram into the other bucket.
• Mica wanted in on this bucket action too, so I handed him one as well.

• Isaak kept looking at me with a big smile on his face. He said, "Mommy look in here!" He wanted me to look in his buckets. He was really impressed with himself.

• He'd be one of those kids that would just fall over if he found a treasure chest full of just small trinkets! He'd probably also love to search for shells on a beach to put them in a bucket. It's too bad we don't live by a beach! The next holiday I may just have to search online for a treasure chest. 

• We'll see his interest's may switch gears. They often do.