Ways To Be Creative

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the word 'creative'? No matter what you pick, it's going to be on the list as there are so many different ways to be creative. But have you thought about all the things you didn't mention and considered how many different ways there are to be creative.

Nature Painting in Watercolor Giveaway

Nature Painting in Watercolor by Kristine A. Lombardi focuses on watercolour painting inspired by the outdoors, specifically, the plants, flowers, birds and animals. This book is a good place for beginning and aspiring artists to learn how to create their favourite ferns, leaves, trees, florals, animals, using the popular watercolour medium.

Simple And Affordable Ways To Boost The Curb Appeal Of Your House

Enhancing curb appeal on a limited budget can be difficult. However, if you look closely at the exterior of each home, you will notice that ambitious projects are not always what attracts a person's attention. Small details entice them and tie everything together.

The Easiest Ways to Upgrade Your Home

We enjoy changing up the decor in our home often to keep it fresh and make it interesting. Without years of change to the decor or renovation, a home can loose its charm. Especially when we get busy, it is hard to stay on top of maintaining a home, but it is worth pursuing because, ultimately, it’ll have additional benefits to us. It’s not necessarily about transforming your home completely. It’s just about making smart upgrades. Here are some of the easiest ways anyone can upgrade their home.

Sealing artwork and coasters with Epoxy Resin

I did a fun canvas painting of a vase using gouache paint for the background and used pressed flowers from previous summers, then sealed it with epoxy resin. Since reading The Ultimate Fluid Pouring and Painting Project book about resin, I have wanted to try it and love how the projects turned out. 

Watercolour Technique for Backgrounds

This watercolour technique inspired by the paint lab book is a fun way to create beautiful backgrounds on watercolour paper. Once the paper dries we can add drawings or calligraphy that will stand out. 

Canvas Painting a Quote with a framed look

I wanted to do a painting that is inspired by our love for travel by incorporating a famous quote "Not all who wander are lost". For this painting, I added mod melts and collage clay. Once the collage clay set, I painted it using DecoArt acrylic paint.

Brushstrokes Acrylic Painting

Brushstrokes: Acrylic Effortless painting with minimal tools and materials by Angela Marie Moulton gives a unique introduction to acrylic painting. We did a few projects following the step-by-step instructions in this book, and love how the paintings turned out. This approach of using colourful bold strokes strategically felt relaxing and fun, and the paintings didn't take too long to do.

Fun Games and Entertainment

We are always excited to try new games and do different hands on activities in our family. We love game nights, and recently have been playing Azul and Ticket to Ride London. We also spent time building with Flexo. A new calendar year comes with new resolutions to become more creative, so we have been practicing watercolour painting with Watercolour the Easy Way book and took the time to clean up, get organized, and even spiced up our phones by replacing our Pop Sockets with creative ones! We have also been reading the Four Seasons of Entertaining book that is filled with colourful photography, recipes, and ideas separated by each season. 

SoSoft Fabric Painted Water Lily pillowcases and bed sheet

I used the steps from the book Ten-Step Drawing: Flowers by Mary Woodin to draw the water lily flowers and customize pillowcases and a bed sheet. For the paint, I used the SoSoft Fabric paint from DecoArt. 

Painting on Glass with Americana Gloss Enamels

I thoroughly enjoyed doing this wall display on an old glass picture frame. Prior to starting the project, I cleaned the glass with rubbing alcohol. Once the surface air dried, I drew a Mandala themed design using a black DecoArt Glass paint marker. 

The 3-Step Werner Project Step Stool is Handy for DIY projects

The 3-Step Type II Project Ladder Step Stool available to purchase at Lowe's is ideal for any task in our home, kitchen or garage. We find the utility tray on this ladder to be useful for our painting and DIY projects as it can hold paint cans and tools that we need. We like having the option of either being able to keep the tray attached or removed depending on our need. 

Tones for Tots Fusion Mineral Paint

The Tones for Tots is a new line of Fusion Mineral Paint. This Natural Nursery line of eco friendly, zero VOC paint is available in 7 beautiful colours that can be purchased online and in independent stores across Canada and the United States for SRP $24.99/pint (500mL) and $5.99 for a tester. Each pint covers approximately 75 sq.ft or 7 m2.

Still Life Painting

One of our favourite hobbies is to paint and draw. I really enjoyed checking out the Still life Painting Studio kit with my children. This kit comes with five tubes of Gouache Paints and a book that explains a few techniques to capture the beauty of everyday objects. It is a wonderful way to introduce Still life painting to children. 

Completion of Our #KitchenReno and Painting with Para Paints

I am glad we completed our mostly DIY #KitchenReno project. We fixed the vent, tiled the floor, transformed the cabinets with Rust-Oleum, organized the drawers in the kitchen with Rev-A-Shelf, installed the Delta Touch2O Technology Faucet, and chose quartz for the countertops. I chose the coin silver grey from Para paints for the kitchen wall, and two different shades of white for the ceiling and trims.

Paintings We Did Inspired by the Acrylic Painting Step by Step Book

Acrylic Painting Step by Step written by Wendy Jelbert, Carole Massey, and David Hyde is a book that inspires us to paint landscapes and flowers. The book gives lots of explantations about materials, techniques, compositions that we can use. This informative book will help those who enjoy painting and those who want to learn how to paint. My children and I did three paintings inspired by this book.

Bubble Wrap Painting

I used bubble wrap to do some imprints on this card and then decorated it. To do this fun art you will need...

Cardstock paper

Bubble wrap

Paint

Sequins

Paper to decorate 

This Roll and Stow Will Help Us With All Our Painting Projects

Painting is one of the top do-it-yourself projects in Canada because it is inexpensive to do it ourselves. Taking on this project is fairly easy, and fun. I feel every time we do our own painting it also gives us a sense of accomplishment when the project is complete. However, every paint project comes with challenges including paint spills, the inconvenience of temporarily packing up paint supplies when we cannot finish a project in a single day and keeping paint tools organized and neat in a single storage place between paint jobs. This new Canadian made Roll and Stow solves all these problems.

Decorating Eggs and Celebrating the Joy of Spring with Kinder

Everyone in my family loves spring! Although, we don't celebrate Easter we enjoy decorating eggs, and each year I like to explore different techniques. My children join me during this craft/ science activity. This year, we explored the Ukrainian method of painting eggs called pysanky. This Eastern European art of egg decorating is similar to batik, and the method requires the use of wax and dye.

Painting and projects

Mag Ruffman and Lowe's have created videos of cool fun family constructible projects that teach parents and children how to build things that they could use. This is a lovely way to create lasting memories.  Some project ideas from Lowe's Family Fun Projects are building a step stool, table with a writing space, a hockey/soccer net and more.