A toddler craft idea – canvas art (and some freebie stickers!)

I may have mentioned before (once or twice!) that I love any kind of arts & crafts activity… and having Emma gives me a great excuse to indulge this. However, I do sometimes struggle to come up with fun and different crafty activities that she can get properly involved in at her age (she’ll be 2 in September), where the finished result is really hers, and not just the result of mummy having taken over (I do acknowledge that this may be the result of mummy’s interfering nature, not just Emma’s age!).

 

This week we were babysitting the gorgeous Olivia, one of Emma’s best friends for a couple of hours, and together we had a fab time combining two of the things we love best in this house – paint and stickers! I thought those of you with little ones might like to try this too, so this blog is a bit of a ‘how to’ guide…and if you’d like some letter stickers to make your own version at home, we’ve got some limited stock of sticker letters that we’ll send you for free (see guidance on how to request these below!).

 

• Something to paint on (I used a blank stretched canvas – at £5 for 4 from The Works, they were a bit of a bargain)
• Paint and paintbrushes (or just fingers / hands / feet!)
• Sticker lettering (if you didn’t have any pre-made lettering, you could always cut out your own using self-adhesive labels)

 

Ok, so whilst I said this project was all Emma and Olivia’s own work – this is one bit I did in advance (spelling not being their strong point yet!). Our sticker letters come with a transfer film to make it really easy to get the positioning right, and the little ones can always help you make sure each letter is stuck down firmly (which is important so they don’t get knocked off when you’re painting). How about personalising a canvas with your little one’s name, or spelling out a message for a super-special pressie?

 

Olivia was pretty good with the paintbrush, Emma preferred the more ‘rustic’ approach of using her hands and feet to cover everything in paint (baby wipes at the ready!). The more paint the better – the only important thing is to make sure all the letters are totally covered, and I am definitely a subscriber to the whole idea of the more messier the look, the cuter the finished result 🙂

 

 

 

I’m far too impatient to enjoy this bit, but we found some other games to keep me them amused, and it only took an hour or so.

 

 

Carefully peel off each of the letters in turn, to reveal the plain canvas underneath and your work of art! The girls seemed to enjoy this bit – whilst pulling things apart is normally a less useful skill, it is one which seems to come naturally to most children…

 

 

I was really thrilled with the canvasses they’d created. Olivia proudly gave her ‘love you mummy’ one to her mum, Claire, when she came to collect her, and I’m planning to put Emma’s ‘happy days’ canvas on the wall amidst some photos of family days out. I love that they made them themselves, and they’re a bit different from all the scribble pictures stuck to our fridge door!

 

 

 

 

 

We have recently changed the material we use for our wall stickers, so have some of our ‘old’ stock of lettering left over. If you’d like to have a go at this crafty idea at home, while stocks last we’ll happily share the sticker love and send you whatever name or phrase you’d like for free! All we ask is that you give us £1 to cover P&P (or if you’re making an order of anything else from our website, just let us know that you’d like these letters too and we’ll enclose them with your order without the extra P&P charge).

 

We just have this old stock in the one font – the same style as in Emma and Olivia’s pictures (all capital letters), and there are 2 different sizes available. Olivia’s ‘love you mummy’ picture uses the smaller letters (approx 3.5cm high) and Emma’s ‘happy days’ picture uses the larger letters (approx 5cm high). If you’d particularly like a different font, style or size, we can always make these as a bespoke order for you, just let us know and we can give you a quote.

 

If you’d like us to send you these sticker letter freebies, let us know you’re interested by adding a quick comment to this post, and then email us at hello@stickerscape.co.uk to let us know what letters you’d like (up to a max of about 15 characters) and what address we should send them to. We’ll then send you details of how to pay your £1, and we’ll post your letters out!

 

Have a happy weekend everyone!

 

Jo xx