Artline Monday - Easter holiday activity

The Easter break has started and any day now you will probably hear the dreaded words "I'm bored!" so today I have a fun and easy activity you can do with your children to keep them occupied for an hour or two.... potato printing Easter eggs!

Now, I thought every young child had done some potato printing in the early years of school but my daughter is nearly eight and she had no idea what I was on about when I mentioned this to her!  Maybe teachers don't have time to carve potatoes for a class of 30 children anymore?  Who knows!  But it is still a great activity to do at home.

Potato printing supplies

You will need:

• Lots of paper
• A potato or two
• Artline poster markers (the chalk markers work well too)
• A knife for carving
• Kitchen roll for blotting and cleaning

When you are selecting your potatoes try to find oval/egg shaped ones, you can cut and trim them into shape but it's easier to start with a basic egg shape.

Carve patterns

Hold your potato upright as if it was an egg in an egg cup and then slice it in half top to bottom.  You can either carve some Easter egg style patters into the potato flesh yourself or give them to your children and let them design their own with a child friendly knife.  We went with stripes and tried to make some flower shapes on our second potato but they ended up looking more like splodges!

Adding the colour

Once you have your carved potatoes, blot them with kitchen roll to pull out some of the moisture before adding the paint.

Then it is time for your children to get creative, pass them the poster markers and let them paint their designs onto the potatoes.  

Ready to print

When the potato is coloured in they can turn it over and print the image onto their paper. 

Printed Easter egg

The children can remove any excess paint from the potatoes with the kitchen roll and then paint them again in different colours and repeat the process over and over.

More printing

We made lots of different colour Easter eggs with our potato "stamps" and had a lot of fun!  You could cut out the prints and use them to make Easter cards or decorations or your children could draw in some more details and patterns using fineliners and pens once the paints have dried.  My daughter carried on printing without me and made sheets and sheets of eggs which she has stuck up on her bedroom wall to decorate the room for Easter.  

Our colourful Easter eggs

If you are looking for more arts and crafts to do over the holidays check out these previous Artline posts for more ideas.

Have a very happy Easter and thanks for stopping by!

Artline Monday - Easter eggs

Decorating eggs for Easter has become a bit of a tradition in our house over the years so I always look forward to getting creative with my girls and our stash of Artline pens when the holiday rolls around.

Our eggs and supplies

We started off with a basket of cooled hard boiled eggs and a selection of Artline products.

The first egg we made is.... can you guess?  It's Mike Wazowski from Monsters inc!  My youngest daughter loves this guy, he always makes her laugh when we watch the Monsters films!

Monsters inc egg

She painted the whole egg green with a poster marker and then left it to dry for about 5 minutes.  I helped her draw the eye with a white paint marker, a blue Supreme permanent marker and a black Artline 853 OHP pen and then she added the smile and popped him back into the egg carton to finish drying.

Kawaii ice cream egg

My eldest daughter made this sweet kawaii style ice cream egg.  She drew a waffle cone pattern on the bottom half of the egg using an orange Artline 853 OHP pen and then coloured in the top half of the egg with a purple chalk marker to look like a scoop of ice cream.  Once the chalk was dry she added eyes, rosy cheeks and smile using a white paint marker, another Artline 853 OHP pen in black and a pink Supreme marker.

Ladybird egg

I couldn't resist making a ladybird egg, the design is really easy to do but it looks great.  I painted the egg red with a poster marker and then helped my girls with their eggs while mine dried.  Once it was completely dry I added details like the head, wings and spots using a black water colour marker and a white paint marker for the eyes. 

Minimalist calligraphy eggs

All the other designs are quite colourful and vibrant so I wanted to do something different with the last of our eggs.  I thought it would be nice to do something simple and minimalist so I just used a white paint marker  on these two and wrote "hello" on one egg and "spring" on the other one.  I also added some spots and dots for the finishing touch, I think they would look nice as part of a table centre piece for Easter.

Last year we made chicks, a flower basket and even a unicorn with our eggs, you can see them here if you need more inspiration!  School breaks up on Friday so this is the perfect activity to keep your children busy while they count down the days until they can devour their chocolate eggs!

Thanks for stopping by!

Artline Monday - Easter holiday activity

Happy Easter!  Have your children finished off all their Easter eggs or uttered the dreaded words "I'm bored" yet?  If you want to keep them entertained over the holiday why not try this fun craft!

Bunnies!

You will need some empty toilet roll tubes, glue, pretty card or paper and a selection of pens.

Supplies

The first step is to paint the toilet roll tubes, I used my Artline poster and paint markers for this step as they dry quickly and are a lot less messy than traditional paints.

Paint the toilet roll tube

The next step is to cut out some bunny ears from your paper or card.  I cut one ear freehand and then used it as a template for all the others.

Bunny ears

Then cut out some smaller ear pieces to glue onto the larger ears.  Again I cut one out first and when I was happy with the size and shape I used it as a template for the other pieces.

Gluing the pieces together

Once you have made the ears put some glue on the bottom of each piece and stick them to the inside of your painted toilet roll tube like this.

Glue the ears into place

Now you have a bunny shape you need to add some details.  I used a white Artline 444XF paint marker to draw some eyes and teeth on each.

Adding eyes and teeth

Then I waited for the paint to dry.

Waiting for the paint to dry

For the noses so I used my pink poster marker on the yellow, blue and purple bunnies....

Painting the noses

.... and my pink Artline 200 fineliner on the pink bunny.

Adding a nose

The last step is to draw the bunnies pupils, whiskers, mouths and teeth, I used my black fineliner for this.

The finished bunnies

These bunnies are perfect to use as some Easter or spring decorations around your home or your children can use them as toys or puppets to play with.  You can also make some larger bunnies using empty kitchen roll tubes and make a whole family of rabbits!  

Enjoy the rest of your holiday and thanks for stopping by!

Planner Friday - March

Hello!  It's Planner Friday again over on the Trendy Twine blog and I am talking about how I am going to record my Easter holiday this year.  Please pop over and say hi!

Happy Easter!  I love the Easter holidays for a couple of reasons, one... well, it's chocolate and two getting to spend lots of time together with my family.  I wanted to document the holiday this year in my bullet journal so I raided my Annie's Paper Boutique supplies and created a candy coloured spread.

Products used: Tag its - pink and lemon

Documenting The Everyday stamp set

Documenting The Everyday #2 stamp set

How's The Weather planner stamps

Used but not pictured: 

This Is December #2 stamp set

I started by adding some strips of pretty washi tape to the top and bottom of the spread and then glued a couple of tag its onto the pages.  The tag its are great for adding a splash of colour and highlighting any information you want to stand out.

Recording the Easter holidays

I used the sun stamp from my How's The Weather set because I am wishing for some warm spring days while my children are off school, if the weather is awful though I have left myself space underneath the sun to record what it was actually like.

You can read the rest of my post here.

Enjoy the rest of you holiday!

Artline Monday - Decorating Easter eggs

One of my favourite Easter activities when I was younger was decorating hard boiled eggs to use as a centrepiece for our dinner table on Easter Sunday.  I wanted to carry on this tradition with my children so I got together some eggs and my Artline pens and we spent a quiet afternoon getting crafty.

Artline Easter eggs

Once the eggs were boiled and cooled I put them on the table with a selection of different pens and markers.

Eggs and Artline supplies

My youngest daughter wanted to have a chick on her egg so I drew the basic shape of one with a yellow paint marker and then added wings and a few feathers on the head.

Drawing a chick shape

My daughter drew the eyes and beak with a couple of Artline 853 OHP markers and then wrote Happy Easter with a metallic gold Artline supreme pen.

Adding the details

Here is the finished egg.

Happy Easter!

My oldest daughter drew patterns on her egg using some more Artline supreme markers.

Drawing flowers with an Artline supreme marker

She also used a green glassboard marker which worked surprisingly well on an egg!

Adding more decoration

Here is her finished design.

Finished egg

I wanted to do something a little different so decided to turn my egg into a cute unicorn.

Painting a base coat

I painted a base coat with my pink poster marker and then had a cup of tea while it dried.

Adding eyes & lashes

The next step was to draw some closed eyes and lashes with my Artline 70 marker.

Unicorn horn

I made the horn by rolling some gold wrapping paper into a cone shape and taping it closed with a thin strip of pink washi tape.  I also cut her two ears out of pink card and then glued everything onto the egg using a little bit of spray adhesive. 

Rosy cheeks

I gave her some sweet rosy cheeks using my pink Artline supreme marker and used lots of pink crystal stickers for an exra bit of decoration.  I think she turned out rather well!

Finished egg

The last egg we decorated was painted blue with a poster marker and left to dry for a little while.

Another base coat

I used my gold Artline 900XF pen to write my youngest daughter's initial on the egg and draw some polka dots around it.

Adding an initial 

It is a simple design but I think the blue and gold colours really stand out together.

Finished egg

Our eggs are very bright and colourful and my girls really enjoyed decorating them.

Our pretty Easter eggs

In fact they have asked me if we can make some more before Easter Sunday so I need to go and buy more eggs!

Eggs, eggs, eggs

If you want to have a go at decorating your own eggs make sure you take a photo of them once you have finished so you can enter our Easter competition!  Keep an eye out on my Facebook page and the Artline Official page for details on how to enter.

Have a fantastic Easter!