the RA RA Home

Chipped Paint

so it seems like nap time has come to an end in our house for cole, and although i'm sad at the precious free time i will loose, i have decided to look at it as an opportunity to spend more one-on-one time with him.  it's also the perfect time to do the activities that dean cannot - mainly art.  some of my best childhood memories are of art projects with my mom.  we've spent three "nap times" making paint chip art, you may remember the idea from this post from a few months ago.  we took the idea a little further and made a few different designs, and it was the perfect activity to teach him different hues of the same color.  they turned out to be great free art, even if you're without kids. we framed our favorite in our kitchen and it was just the punch of color we needed...

we made all three designs with the same set of about 40 paint chips.
we chose these by glidden because they were large [3x5]
we had a great time picking them out based on their names,
a few of our favorites - green grass, fresh blueberries and sweet baby boy.

he was excited because this was the first time he got to use scissors...

...and glue. 

here were the  three designs and a basic template for each...

we made ours to fit within an existing frame [7.5" x 10.5"] and
divided those measurements and made each square 1.5"
we cut out a shape on each one to trace on top of the paint chips 

we used a candle and large bowl to trace around for the two rings, then drew
a horizontal and vertical line and eye-balled the other lines in between

we drew a horizontal line to determine the width of the base first [ours was 7"]
then found the center point and measured up 6" and connected the three points.
to make the inner triangle we lined up our ruler against the lines of the outer one.
to create the small triangles we just followed the intersecting points between the two main triangles.
this design had three different shapes so we cut out a template for each.

*note - when gluing these down i would recommend intentionally leaving little gaps here and there instead of trying to line them up perfectly, otherwise you will end up with one big gap at the end.  we used elmers to be kid-friendly, but if that's not an issue [and you're a perfectionist] then i would use a higher quality glue like rubber cement.  the elmers causes puckering, which to me was part of the charm of "the pixel" - it reminded me of a quilt.