The girls were so inspired by Kandinsky and his "noisy paint box", the other day, that as soon as we had finished our cookies, they wanted to paint. Wanting to keep it small, after the cookie project, I gave them note cards, with water color paints - the first supplies I happened upon in our craft cupboard.
I figured they'd paint one, or two cards worth, and be done. But, they were really inspired, and spent more than an hour, carefully painting dozens of cards.
As I looked at them drying on the table, I wondered if we could put them to use as post cards. I've seen people making their own post cards with note cards before, but ours were small, 3'' x 5'' cards, painted with water color paint. I wasn't sure they'd make it through the mail.
The girls liked the idea though, so we decided to give it a try, with a test card to start. C (age 8) picked one of the pictures for Grandma, signed it...
...glued an extra card to the back...
...to make it sturdier...
...and brushed a quick coating of watered down glue, with smooth long strokes, to seal the paint (we hoped).
When that was dry, we flipped the card over, and drew a line down the middle, for a title and message on the left...
...and addresses and stamp on the right.
She popped it in the post, and we waited...
...to see if it would make it safely to Grandma's house, or not. Not only did it make it intact, but Grandma was so thrilled, she's already framed it to hang on her wall.
Email is wonderful, and incredibly convenient. In fact, if it weren't for email, I wouldn't have had instant access to a picture of my mother holding C's painting, to show to her. But, looking at the grin on C's face, when she saw her card in her grandmother's hands...well, there's something to be said for the personal touch of a hand painted post card.
11 comments:
Love it! What a great idea! While the rest of the world is into email and social media to stay in touch, I'm glad kids can still learn how beautifully personal it is to receive something in the mail that you can hold in your hands. My kids are so into mailing things lately, so they'll be excited to do this project.
I love it! That actually reminds me, I'd planned to do some painting this afternoon, and then I spent it instead on the phone with friends.....
This is great! When I saw cards, I immediately thought of ATC (art trading cards) that many professional and amateur artists make and then exchange with one another internationally. It's a very fun way to make art every day because each card is postcard size so do-able on a daily basis. Your girls' cards are beautifully painted. It's no wonder Grandma got hers framed! :-)
Fun! We make "postcards" for birthday invitations to invite family over, only after addressing them & writing a little message we simply laminate them, stick a stamp on & pop it in the box. The've all made it to their destinations too! :)
The paintings are beautiful, and I love that they were able to go through the mail. :-)
This would be a great idea for my guys to do with their grand parents in Ireland.
Just curious - but what are the grey boxes that the postcard is being posted into? We only have red pillar boxes over here and have never seen anything like that before. Do you have to post it in a specific slot or would any of the slots do??
Claire - Those are security mail boxes for our neighborhood. In newer neighborhoods all the mail is delivered to boxes like that, instead of right to your door, or individual mail box. We have a key for one of the slots - for our "incoming" mail. Two of the big boxes have "outgoing" mail slots, where everyone can drop their mail. Each box also has a big slot for packages. If you have a package, you get a special key in your box that opens the big slot door - then you take our your package, and leave the special key in the lock for the mail man.
How lovely! My daughter loves Kandinsky. I see a watercolor set in our future!
On your recommendation, I picked up that Kandinsky book at the library yesterday. We can't wait to read it and hopefully do a project or two also. :-)
wonderful!♥
Very beautiful!
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