Creative Homemade Gifts- Painting
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One way to save money is to make your own homemade gifts from the heart. This is especially a great idea for teachers, parents, grandparents, or that special someone. Kids can make it- or adults can make it! You can browse online and literally find thousands of ideas. With almost all of our grandparents birthdays coming up in the next 3 months we decided to let our boys paint them something special. We bought a canvas at Michael’s craft store last summer when they were on sale with a coupon, I think we paid about $1 per canvas. Acrylic paints (not the fancy ones!) are extremely inexpensive – about $.59-$.69 on a normal sale. And of course you will need a paintbrush.
You don’t need anything fancy to put the paint on. We’ve used anything from a plate (show below) to a tupperware or lid. They do make special little paint trays but we’ve never found that necessary with little kids.
I highly suggest an art smock or old shirt for small children- especially if you’re using acrylic paint as it is not washable. As you can see in the paint below, my oldest son loves to mix all the colors in his plate together before actually painting.
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Even the youngest child can paint. My youngest is 1 year old and I actually think he loves painting more than my 3 year old. I was surprised that he actually dipped his paintbrush in the water too when washing his brush off!
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To save money (and grandparents sanity of having too many canvases!) I had both boys paint on one canvas. I liked the collage idea of 1 painting with 2 different artists all in one spot. I wish I had had the boys paint for me to be honest!!
Look at this beautiful gift for a grandparent! I painted their name on the bottom of each of their painting. You can wrap this in a ribbon, or even buy one of those nice hatboxes if you’d like to present it in a special way.
