“Made with love by…” Kid’s Art Projects Worthy of Holiday Gifting

Are you searching for holiday gifts that are unique, meaningful, hand-made, and low cost? These four art projects are fun for any age and produce beautiful works of art that can be given as gifts to friends and relatives!

Images below show the finished projects. All instructions are in recipe card format so that they can be easily saved and printed. If your family makes any of the following projects, share pictures of creations in the comments. We’d love to see the works of art you and your children create together!

Pro-Tip: Up the professional presentation of your children’s art projects with a mat and a frame. My favorite combination is a large white mat within a simple black or white frame.

Watercolor Blow Paintings with Outlining
Kiddos blow air through straws to move liquid watercolors across a page. Outlining in permanent marker creates a sophisticated finished product.
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* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Ingredients
  1. Liquid Watercolors
  2. White cardstock or other heavy (thick) paper
  3. Drinking Straws
  4. Fine-tip permanent marker
Instructions
  1. Place a sheet of white cardstock on your table or work surface.
  2. Drop a few drops of liquid watercolor onto the paper. Try using just one or two colors to start.
  3. Give your child a straw and show them how to blow air through the straw to move the paint across the page. Watch how the colors blend when they run into one another.
  4. Encourage your child to blow air with different intensities to create many types of shapes.
  5. After the liquid watercolor has dried, use a fine-tip permanent marker to outline the shapes.
  6. If your child is old enough, they can do the outlining themselves. If they are too little, you do the outlining to create a collaborative work of art with your child.
Notes
  1. When buying liquid watercolors, look for sets that include metallics. Metallic colors add an extra pop to finished paintings.
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Oklahoma City Mom https://okcmom.com/
Mixed Media Frames
Kiddos use markers, crayons, colored pencils, glitter glue and paint (either tempera or liquid watercolor) to decorate mats. Add their portrait and frame for a gifting win.
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* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Ingredients
  1. Markers
  2. Colored Pencils
  3. Crayons
  4. Liquid Watercolor or Tempera Paint
  5. Paint Brushes
  6. Plain white mats, available online or at your local craft store
Instructions
  1. Protect your table or work area by covering it with butcher paper, news paper, or paper sacks. This project gets a little messy.
  2. Give your artist the white mat/s and an assortment of colored pencils, crayons, paint, paint brushes, and glitter glue. Encourage them to cover the mat in lines, scribbles, and brushstrokes.
  3. After the mat/s have dried, add a high quality portrait of the artist (your child), frame, and gift!
Notes
  1. Consider selecting a color palette in advance. For example, the children who made the frames shown in the images above used only cool colors - blues, greens, and purples. Other options are warm colors (reds, yellows, and oranges), neon colors, natural colors, rainbow colors, etc..
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Oklahoma City Mom https://okcmom.com/
Cookie Sheet Monoprints
Kiddos paint with fingers or brushes onto cookie sheets, press a sheet of paper on top, then pull it away to create a colorful mono-print.
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* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Ingredients
  1. Tempera paint
  2. Cookie sheets
  3. White cardstock or other heavy (thick) paper
  4. Optional: Paintbrushes, cottonballs
Instructions
  1. You may want to dress your child in a smock or old t-shirt for this project. Also, consider painting out doors as this project can get messy.
  2. Show your child how to drop small amounts of paint, about the size of a quarter, directly onto the cookie sheet.
  3. Encourage them to move the paint around on the cookie sheet using their fingers, paintbrushes, or cottonballs.
  4. When they are finished moving and blending the paint, help them lay a sheet of paper down on top of the paint and press it down flat. Show them how to use their hands to smooth over the entire sheet, making sure it touches most of the painted surface.
  5. Pull the paper off the cookie sheet to reveal a monoprint.
  6. Clean the cookie sheet and repeat. Experiment with different amounts of paint, and different color combinations, to create a variety of designs.
Notes
  1. Each monoprint only takes a few minutes to create. Help your child repeat the process many times and then ask them to help you select the best/most colorful/most interesting monoprints to give as a gifts.
  2. Start with just two or three colors of paint. Too many colors, or too much blending, can create muddy areas.
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Oklahoma City Mom https://okcmom.com/
Styrofoam Printing
Kiddos use sharpened pencils to carve into the back of styrofoam plates or trays, to create a relief print, much like a stamp. Add paint and press on paper to create multiple prints of their design.
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* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Ingredients
  1. Styrofoam plates or trays
  2. Sharpened pencils
  3. Craft paint (or any other type of paint you prefer)
  4. White cardstock or other heavy (thick) paper
  5. Paintbrushes or cottonballs
Instructions
  1. Show your child how to carve a design into the back of their styrofoam plate or tray using the sharpened pencil. Encourage them to make deep lines, this will make a better print.
  2. After your child has finished creating their design, help them cover the entire surface of the back of the plate with paint using a paintbrush or cotton ball. Be careful to only use a little bit of paint per print. Too much paint covering the back of the plate will get into the carved areas when you press it to the page and you will lose the design in the print.
  3. Carefully press the painted plate onto a sheet of paper. Show your child how to press down on all areas of the plate to make sure that the paint is evenly "stamped" onto the paper.
  4. Remove the plate, add more paint, and print over and over again.
Notes
  1. We doing this project with younger children, it can be helpful to have a guiding theme, for example, drawing only faces, only animals, only flowers, etc. Drawings of faces work well on the round Styrofoam dinner and dessert plates.
  2. This project can be adapted for children as young as 18 months, they may not be able to draw a picture in their plate but they can scratch and poke the surface to create an interesting abstract design, see the print in blue above.
  3. You can use just one color per print, or try painting two or three colors of paint on different areas of the plate, for example, if you have a design of a flower, paint the petals on the plate red and the leaves green then "stamp."
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Oklahoma City Mom https://okcmom.com/
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Heather White
Heather is a museum educator and art teacher in Oklahoma City. She designs and leads gallery experiences for visitors of all ages at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and teaches art for toddlers and preschoolers at a local day school and at the Belle Isle Library. She has one son, Roger (3) and an aging dog, Amica (15). Her husband Jared is completing a pediatric anesthesiology fellowship at OUHSC. When not balancing the demands of three part time gigs, writing, parenting, and housekeeping, Heather spends what little free time is left maxing out her library card, trying new recipes, gardening, art-making, traveling, listening to NPR, watching movies, and making the long drive back to Texas to see friends and family.

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