Waterbrush Marker Wonderfulness

Helloooooo, from almost-Friday of the first week of school!!

My kiddos have adapted swimmingly to the school year grind, though they come home: a) over-heated, ‘cause it’s hella hot, b) pretty wiped, because—hello—the days are long, and c) in need of a bit o’ decompression time.

All understandable things.

But of course, I’m an inquisitive Mama, and I love to know details about their days—especially when we’re in the early stages of settling in to new classrooms and routines.

So every day after school this week, I’ve arranged something that will give us some time together (when I can keep them chatting), before I lose them to their iPads for a bit of quiet time.

Two days, the activity was swimming (yay, for the cooling off); one day, it was cookie-baking and LEGO fun; and today, it was a two-thumbs-up easy, beautiful project, utilizing…

Watercolor brush markers! Woohoo!

I truly am just tickled (watercolor) pink over how these turned out, and it required little effort and/or skill to make the canvases so loverly.

The gist:

I was at Tarjay for a couple of quick times today and wanted to snag some sort of coloring or painting project (perhaps from this line of crafts we’ve been digging).

But any of the options I explored cost $10 per canvas, and I just didn’t want to rack up $30 for all three kiddos combined—$40, if I wanted to participate.

So. I was inspired when I saw this really awesome set of watercolor brush markers (that are technically marketed as pens):

I thought it might be as close to painting as possible—minus the mess, plus the ability for precision.

So I grabbed some of our 8x10 canvases we typically have hanging around, and hauled them me when I left for the school pickup—along with a black sharpie. And I just spent a few minutes making random patterns, a lot like I did for the DIY stained class sun-catchers that turned out so well a few weeks ago:





I gotta say, it was a lot o’ fun—and fairly quick—to just free-hand these designs, and when I set out the project for the kiddos (after they’d bathed off their day and were all deliciously fresh), they were hysterically complimentary. Like: Mama, you made these??? Ha. 

It turns out the design parameters created just the perfect, attainable sections for them to tackle some beautiful canvases!









And it only took about 10 minutes or so to realize that the markers are totally blend-able in the most gorgeous way.

I mean, it was seriously fun to try out all sorts of color combinations within the sections. Layer, then layer some more—and if we didn’t like how it turned out, layer some more with a different color!



Hysterically, Little Man lurved the process of layering so much (and—let’s be real—he’s kind of an artistic perfectionist and wanted to get it just so), that he spent more than half an hour on these sections alone, ha. 

Believe it or not, every time I looked up, those sections looked different! One time, he said it was like fire, and another, he said it looks “old timey, like that painting in Mr. Peabody.” Translation: he meant The Mona Lisa. Tehe.

Chicklet went with a looser approach with minimal blending, and I just adore the white spaces in her overall canvas. Almost looks like the edges of the sections were bleached of color.

And Chica’s is looking so very gorgeous and saturated. She’s taking such time and care—I know she’ll be coming back to it for days. :)





So…in summary, in case you can’t tell: we really, really dug this one, I think the results are gorgeous, and I can see many applications for these brushes in the future. (Many thanks to Chica for her photography credits on Mama’s finished canvas. ;) 

Looking forward to bringing my babies home from school tomorrow and showering them with some down time while they’re still getting used to their long days. 

It’s gonna be a Quality Family Time kinda weekend. :)

Over and out.