NOW CLOSED: Share your cheap art tips for children - you could win a £100 voucher from Barclays

[AnnMumsnet]

Please note the Barclays Mini Masterpiece Competition closes at midnight on 31 August 2012

We've been asked by Barclays to find out your best tips for cheap art projects for children - whether its something you set up for them or just arty things your children enjoy doing. And when they're finished, what do you do with the artwork?

For example:
Do you send them outside with paints or allow them to get 'creative' on the dining room table?
What works well as a cheap art option?
What's the most mess they've ever managed to make? Or do they manage to keep it all in one place?
What do you do with the creations? Are they more likely to be stuck on the fridge or assigned to the recycling?
Are you someone who keeps everything, nothing or some special creations? What makes you keep some but not everything?

Whilst we are talking art (and the future uses of it) we wanted to highlight (and you may have seen it already) - the amazing competition Barclays are running.

Barclays (via their pages on Mumsnet as well as on their own site) are on the look out for those special art pieces (from children in your family aged 12 or under at the time of entry) for their 'Mini Masterpiece' competition.

Barclays say "We're looking for fantastic artwork by kids to celebrate the launch of the new free Barclays Personalised Card Service. You don't need to be a Barclays customer to enter the Mini Masterpiece Competition and we've got fantastic prizes to give away, including a family holiday (worth £2000) and lots of arty goodies for kids.

"The judges, Carrie Longton (co-founder of Mumsnet), and Lauren Child (creator of Charlie and Lola), will choose a winner and 20 runners-up - deciding which images they think would make the brightest, most original and vibrant debit card designs"

There's more info, full T&Cs and details on the prizes here

If you add an arty story or share a child art related tip on this thread you'll be entered into a prize draw where one winner will get a £100 Amazon voucher.

Do also let us know on this thread if you've entered or will enter the Barclays competition - good luck to all entrants

Thanks
MNHQ

[Fillybuster]

I am totally inspired by the suggestions of taking photos of the dcs with their finished products....especially for large items, which have taken a lot of time - ds is particularly keen on junk-sculpture and has made some excellent exhibits which we couldn't possibly store/keep long term. I think that will go some way towards resolving our burgeoning attic collection :)

[coff33pot]

Arts and crafts involve inside and out from chalking faces and animals on the surrounding fencing then having fun using a water pistol to zap them off to my ds having his own piece of six ft fence to paint with his poster paints so I have an art wall outside in the garden. Another thing we like doing is looking for different shells and stones on the beach then taking them home, getting some clay or play dough and making animals or shapes and covering them in the shells and bits by just pressing them in. These also go in the garden for display so it's a bit of a gallery out there!

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

Ds likes to get books out of the library that usually involve us making creations out of cardboard, toilet paper, cling film and glue such as the pirate island we made. We do it on the dining table which is in the conservatory.

I keep creations for a while but recycle eventually. Ds has lots of his drawings up on his bedroom wall though and a few on the fridge.

We also do the chalking on the patio thing too.

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

Ds likes to get books out of the library that usually involve us making creations out of cardboard, toilet paper, cling film and glue such as the pirate island we made. We do it on the dining table which is in the conservatory.

I keep creations for a while but recycle eventually. Ds has lots of his drawings up on his bedroom wall though and a few on the fridge.

We also do the chalking on the patio thing too.

[rufus5]

I keep the art work for a while, any particularly special pieces go into the filing cabinet and for others I take a photo of DS holding it, but the rest gets chucked out from time to time.

Cotton wool balls are great for art - stick them on to coloured paper for anything from clouds in the sky, to smoke out of a train, to little fluffy sheep, or Santa's beard. Then just need a crayon for DS to draw in whatever details he likes!

[flamingtoaster]

One of the art activities my DC enjoyed when small was to be given a bucket of water and a selection of adult paintbrushes on the patio. They would then draw their creations on the patio (or the wall) in water and by the time they got to the end the first part had dried so they could start over again. Great fun and no mess!

[chrisrobin]

I recycle some of the childrens art work into birthday cards for grandparents or suggest they decorate large sheets of paper which is then used as wrapping paper or the presents. The GPs love it and it saves money too!

We keep the number of pictures in their room to a maximum of 6 each using a 'gallery' which will only hold so many. Then when they come home from school with a new masterpiece they have to take an old one down to put the new one up.

They will randomly come to me and say 'can we make something?' and I say okay, lets see what we've got. We then rumage around finding bits and pieces and see what we can make with it all. Their favourite craft at the moment is using the big boxes from the supermarket to create vehicles and then having pretend races with them. We use the plastic trays that small cakes come in to hold the paint and use varoius other items from the recycling bag (egg boxes, yoghurt pots, etc) to decorate them.

Another favourite is colouring salt with chalk (put salt onto paper and then rub it with chalk) then making different coloured layers in an old baby food jar or small jam jar.

[Jackstini]

Salad spinner - cost about 3.99.
Put blobs of paint on a square bit of paper, lay inside & spin.
They never tire of seeing how it comes out.

I put best bits up on office wall & their bedroom walls and keep favourites

[LineRunner]

Asda are selling off packets of coloured tissue paper (20 sheets, various colours) at the moment for 50p. Great for scrunching into flowers and shapes for collages - you only flour and water paste (which you can colour with cheap food colourings) to go with it.

As for storage - every year we have to decide to keep a couple of pieces in boxes and folders, and part with the rest. My DCs are older now and they love to look back at their own toddler creations.

[TunipTheVegemal]

My two year old offers this tip:

Hama beads and a packet of flour are an excellent medium for exploring colour and texture. If your mummy is silly enough to clean it up and then go off to post on Facebook about it, forgetting to put the flour and beads out of reach, you can do it twice!

[TunipTheVegemal]

My three consider cake decoration to be the best art form. Use readyroll icing like playdough, or icing pens for drawing, or butter icing in a piping bag for general squishy fun. And there are no dilemmas about what to do with it afterwards

[TunipTheVegemal]

A habit of my mother's that I have tried to emulate is having a 'box box' where the cardboard boxes go for art usage, but some bugger keeps nicking the contents for "recycling"

[TunipTheVegemal]

Art on the beach using seaweed, marks on the sand etc is good fun and takes no clearing up.

[CrackedNipplesSuchFun]

I watched an old episode of DIY SOS the other week and the couple on the show, having their house done up, would take their children to charity shops and buy framed pictures and then the kids would use paints to paint over the top of the original print to upcycle, it was rather fab and an idea I will definitely do with my little boy when he is older.

[carrh1]

Hi we love being arty in the summer - we also like wallaper in the garden but we go messy with bowls of paint and then create foot print art - great fun but make sure you all wear old clothes as it can get quite slippy out there!

We also enjoy lots of papier mache - but as my kids have no patience for letting it dry these days we tend to use painters masking tape ( v cheap in £1 shops) wrapped round boxes sticks everything together and gives great base for painting this year we've created milk bottle elephants and jelly box tanks !!

[nipitinthebud]

BTW if anyone has probs entering the comp and its comes up in red about the text box - but doesn't tell you what the problem is - its could be either more than 250 word count (but doesn't give a running total so you know) OR that it doesn't recognise certain characters, didn't seem to like question marks or parantheses.

[Luckystar96]

My daughter has just made a lovely jewellery/trinket box. Just use a box with a lid( like the ones with washing tablets in ). Mix some paint with a little flour and it makes the paint stick really well and a bit matt. Then when dry, scrunch/roll up some small pieces of kitchen foil and make into swirls and glue to the box. Really effective and useful too. (she asked if it had to be self raising flour - we've been doing some baking recently, bless)

[1805]

I stripped ours down, to body paint in the garden onto a large strip of lining paper. Mind you - even after being hosed down they were stained pink for a while. dd didn't mind, but ds did!!!

Proper art work gets hung in the kitchen from a line of string and washing pegs. When it is full, it is a one-up-one-down policy.

Date and name the artwork when it's done.

Shadow drawing is popular in this house as basically they just have to trace an outline.

Storage - each child has a box in the attic containing old school books/reports/special artwork/memories etc.
Artwork which has survived on the kitchen string until August will be stored in "the attic box".

Most mess = when dd spilt a packet of green glitter all over the dog. I was finding it for months.

[jimmenycricket]

We bought a big plastic frame from IKEA and we have 'artwork of the week' from school and every Friday DD solemnly takes the old one out and puts the new one in and recycles the old one. Saves my house being full of frankly not very good pictures!

[RabbitsMakeBrownEggs]

We use the big rolls of paper from IKEA for artwork. The paper is nice and thick and it is folded away afterwards and recycled as wrapping paper at Christmas for family presents.

I display artwork in the hallway up the stairs so everyone can see it, then put it away into a box which I am saving up their work over the years into, so they can look back and see the things I treasured.

Wilkinsons have some really great art supplies at the moment. At pocket money prices too, my children have made masks and jewellery so far for a pound each, and we have pom pom animals, sticky tissue paper animals, and lots of crafting bits and pieces. Really worth checking out for some instant crafting.

[JugglingWithFiveRings]

I think some quality products can go a long way ... I'm a big fan of oil pastels - lovely and bright and bold. A box of water colours each has been well used by both DC's too.

I guess my top tip though is to do home-made birthday cards for all friends and family. You can get blank card very reasonably eg. from "The Works" (is that a national chain ? ) and DC's have made some lovely cards for everyone using those oil pastels I mentioned amongst other things.

[InMySpareTime]

The Works is a national chain (they certainly have them in the North West, London and Edinburgh, reasonably widespread.
We home make birthday cards too, it really fires the DCs imaginations working out what to draw on for each person.
Poster paints are good for painting on windows as long as the paint isn't put on too thick or it drips.
Also, using cellophane chocolate wrappers makes lovely "stained glass windows" to stick on the window glass.
Ask tile shops for broken tile fragments, and make your own mosaics. If they're good, you can get tile adhesive and either make a mosaic outside, or stick them into a whole tile to make a wall picture.

[Cremolavelodrome]

We do quite a lot of felting in this house - with dd and her cousins who are 7, 8 and 5.
With a small bag I'd mixed colour woollen tops , some washing up liquid and a bit of bubble wrap we make coloured felted pictures, beads and flowers for necklaces and brooches.
I also have a giant button box for sewing into felt pictures and brooches.
It's v relaxing and takes a while do we all sit round the kitchen table and rub our felt together chatting and listening to music.
The floor gets a bit sudsy but that's an acceptable mess to anyone I think!
Felt takes a while to dry but I always have some ready made for cutting into flower shapes and a handy glue gun for instant sticking!

[turnipvontrapp]

I can't upload the photo on the Barclays site? Its the right size and under 5mb. Shows like its uploading then at the end it says no file chosen. Anyone else having this problem?