The one aspect of Cakes' Yellow Art Party I came up with on my own (without any input from Cakes, haha) was to paint the white concrete wall in the back yard. When Cakes was very small I painted the wall white, painted a small section with blackboard paint and never really did much with it. I thought about painting a nice mural on it (but who wants to look at a painting their Mum did?), then getting her to paint a block each year as she got older (but what if she ended up with a sibling and we started to run out of blocks?) and that is when it hit me this party was perfect for her to get some art from her friends she could keep forever (or until she wants to repaint the wall).
The first hurdle was how I was going to ensure each child only painted on one block. My first thought was to newspaper it up (but somehow every newspaper I kept, ended up in the bin). I then decided to use a table cloth (one of the plastic ones we use as an art mat occasionally). I had intended to precut this into pieces for an easy stick up on the morning though got caught up with everything else and never got to it. So early on the morning I headed out and stuck it up with what I thought was awesome packing tape (but it wasn't great and fell a little). I cut out the holes of each block with a stanley knife (following the grouty bits) and taped it up with Cakes' painting tape (so now I owe her a new pack).
The first hurdle was how I was going to ensure each child only painted on one block. My first thought was to newspaper it up (but somehow every newspaper I kept, ended up in the bin). I then decided to use a table cloth (one of the plastic ones we use as an art mat occasionally). I had intended to precut this into pieces for an easy stick up on the morning though got caught up with everything else and never got to it. So early on the morning I headed out and stuck it up with what I thought was awesome packing tape (but it wasn't great and fell a little). I cut out the holes of each block with a stanley knife (following the grouty bits) and taped it up with Cakes' painting tape (so now I owe her a new pack).
Each child took to this activity easily and it was clear they felt no pressure. Even though only one painting was a recognisable picture from Big Cousin H (who painted a dinosaur that breaths fire that has a name I really just cannot spell), I was impressed by the three girls painting their names over their beautiful patterns and the other two boys just enjoying the colours and painting.
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The next hurdle was how I was going to allow the children to access the paint. It needed to be the house paint we use in the garden to ensure it remains there for many years to come. As this is a paint that will stain I had to ensure all children would be in their aprons when using it. As there was only going to be a few children at the party it should be easy to monitor, right? Noooo, they were every where. As I am cheap I also didn't want too much paint to be wasted so leaving the pots out was not happening. But if I pour paint into another container I might end up with left overs or worse run short. I ended up using 6 yoghurt containers, 1 for each of the primary and secondary colours. This was a great option as I could just cling wrap them and use them for some small work later (like painting river rocks). The only problem was I forgot and when I did remember they had all grown a skin. I still wrapped them in cling wrap and will try save as much as I can (I am so cheap I know). So here is what it looks like.
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