An Amazing Craft

Elina absolutely loves Monet's paintings.  It's funny because when I was younger, I had a Monet obsession as well.  We recently checked out the book The Magical Garden of Claude Monet from the library.  It's a great book that shows Monet and a little girl walking through his garden in France.  The pictures of the garden in the book are actually many of his paintings.

After we read the book, I just wanted to do a craft about Monet.  I looked on the Web and found this Mini-Monet craft.  It's one of the most awesome crafts I've ever done.  I was excited about it when I saw the video, but after I saw the kids doing it, I couldn't help but do one myself!  And I got really into it!

It's fairly simple.  You lay shrink film over a copy of a drawing/painting (in this case we used Impressionist paintings) and you fill in the colors with short (Impressionistic) strokes using pastels.  You can copy the colors or be creative.

After you're done, you place the shrink film in the oven (according to the directions that come with the film) and you watch your masterpiece shrink down in size (which is the coolest part of the whole process).  When you take out your artwork, you can see your painting more clearly because all the strokes have been shrunk down...the colors are richer...everything looks brighter.  It's awesome!

The kids got so into it that they each made 2 or 3 that day.  Then the adults got in on the action, too.  We had a wonderful time working on this craft together.  It makes for perfect gifts, too.  You can paint a border around the end-product to make it look like a real frame.  Or you can punch a hole in the shrink film before you bake it and make it into a pendant or keychain.  The possibilities are endless.  We are definitely going to be doing more of these in the future!