A "Lude" Painting

I realize now as I continue to post things that for the most part my blog would be what you would consider a "food blog". This is not really a problem for me but sometimes I feel the need to break up the monotony a bit and share a little something else. We do more than just cook in this house. You know that, right?

I have recently joined a site called Pinterest. It's sort of like a place where you can bookmark different things you see online. It also has a page where you can see what everyone is pinning or a page where you you can see just the stuff your friends or other people you are following are pinning. It's highly addictive. There are just so many great ideas out there. The other week one of my friends pinned this craft idea for a painting your kid can do with their initial in it. It was put online by Blissfully Domestic .

I loved the idea but I thought it would be cooler to do it with the kids full first names instead of just using the first letter of their names. I also wanted to do it on canvas so it was a little more durable and permanent. After a trip to the craft store to grab some painters tape, some poster paint (washable), and some canvases we got started.

This project did require me to do a little math. I had to figure out how big each letter had to be so that they would be spaced evenly. Once I had that figured out I just put a small pencil mark at the edge on either side of the canvas so I wouldn't get the letters crooked.

 I used the painters tape and placed each letter on the canvas. Curved letters were a little more challenging but I found that by using an exacto knife and a ruler that I was able to get them to look how I wanted.

It took me about an hour to do all three canvases for my kids. When they were all taped I rubbed the painters tape down so the lines would stay crisp after the paint had dried.

Then came the fun part. This was going to be Jude's first time painting. These are some of my favorite times as a mom. I love introducing them to new things. There is so much to see and discover in this world and I am lucky to be able to watch them try a lot of it for the first time. Luckier still because I am armed with a camera.

Jude dove right in. Lily cheered him on and directed him on the "proper" technique to finger painting. After all Lily has been doing this ever since she was a "little kid". I love when she talks like that.

Since Lily is a "big girl" now she decided it would be more proper to do hers like her big sister and use a paintbrush. *sigh* They grow up so fast...

She is so careful now to get it just the way she wants it. She even did the sides of the canvas. Naiya is also very careful. Even more so because she has a vision of what she wants in her head. She wanted this one to look like a night sky.

It took a lot less time for them to paint the canvases then it took me to prep them. But they had more fun painting then I did prepping so I guess it all evened out in the end.

The paint took several hours to dry. Lily's took the longest due to the amount of paint she had managed to spread onto her canvas.

After they had dried came the cool part; the removing of the tape. I carefully peeled off the letters and...

They came out really well. They kids were ecstatic. The letters on Lily's and Naiya's canvases were crisper than Jude's but I think that's because they used brushes while he used his fingers. Jude kept pointing at his saying, "I painted it! Too cool mama!". We hung them up in their rooms. I photographed them...repeatedly. 

My husband came home late that night after having been away for 5 days. When he went into Jude's room to tuck him in and give him a kiss I followed to point out what they had done that day. It was then that I noticed something...did you notice it? Look up at Jude's painting again if you missed it. I was standing there in his dark bedroom lit only from the hallway light tracing the letter "J" in the still air in front of me. Yup...backwards. Of course my husband noticed it right away. Somehow I had missed that small detail in my excitement of prepping the canvases. So there it hangs in all it's glory, Jude's "Lude" painting.

It was still a great craft. It was easy to do, the kids loved it, and it was done and hung in one day.