The $2.99 Canvas

In case you've missed the memo about my love affair with brown craft paper, here's another post about its absolute usefulness and versatility.  I get mine at Hobby Lobby.

As I've said before, I use the brown craft paper to wrap all of my gifts.  It makes for a neutral background that I can then pretty up with some graphic ribbons or theme stickers.

Another use for it is as a "canvas".  I tend to get overwhelmed with the constant making of crafts that A.) serve no real purpose; and B.) need to find a home in my house because I feel too guilty about throwing a "project" away.  

So I decided to find something creative my kids could do that I didn't feel guilty about trashing, BUT it took up time AND allowed them to be creative.

I took my said roll of craft paper, rolled it out, covered my dining room table, and taped it down.  **We have a hand-me-down table with some kind of survive-all surface, so if you have a nice table you might want to do a double layer of paper.**

The first day, we got out markers and I just let the kids color all over the table.  I sat with them and drew pictures upon request.  I also drew shapes for Heidi Sage to name, and wrote Clinton's name in block letters for him to fill in as he is learning to write his name.  To my surprise, Clinton made his very first attempt at drawing our family!  I, of course, could not throw this away...so I cut this part off and intend to find a way to display it in our house.

We let the marker drawings sit for a couple of days.  When the kids began to act interested again, we got out paints.  I just let them paint all over the top of what they had colored.  Clearly, I am not a Type A person.

And after a few days of admiring their paint job, the kids got interested again.  So yesterday we ventured in glue.  I dumped some Mod Podge in a container and gave them each a paint brush for application along with fun stuff for gluing...buttons, pom poms, sequins, glitter, etc.

And then today, I pulled what pieces of their creative activities I wanted to keep.  I put away all the supplies.  And I took our big piece of paper, wadded it up, and threw it in the trash.  And it felt good.

All in all, I give the project two thumbs up.  There was no TV involved.  My kids were being creative.  And I didn't feel bad about throwing out most of the project.

**UPDATE**  As you may notice in the comments, Samantha had a great idea!  Instead of wadding up the paper and throwing it out, use it as wrapping paper!  Brilliant!

Colored, painted, and glued,