Kids Craft Project: Painted Dream Catchers

Hello Creativity Lovers!

I'm sharing a craft project that we kept busy with one day over the school holidays.

We had some of our kids' friends over for a whole day, and they are art and craft lovers, so we thought we'd come up with a special project for them to complete while they were here. 

Painted dream catchers! 

I got the fabric circles and wire loops ready before our guests came over. I cut circles of calico, a little smaller than the wire circles I made, sewed around them leaving a gap, snipped around the edges then turned out to the right side. I pressed the circles with an iron, then topstitched close to the edges all around, sealing the opening.

I gave each circle a coat of gesso and let dry. Check out my desk, one of my kids has written "ART!" Haha.

I suggested each kid think of a theme for their dream catcher, and we printed off some pictures from the internet for inspiration. I also suggested we each thought about our colour theme, and whether we wanted lighter or darker colours. One of my girls thought a colour palette scheme printed from the internet would be a good idea, so we did that.

Once the kids were in the studio, they chose fabric to wrap around our wire circles, sealing the ends with tacky craft glue. 

Then the kids got to work painting their chosen themes. We used student grade acrylic paint, and one kid chose to add some pen to the top of their dry painting (we used a hair dryer to speed up the paint drying), and another chose to use some stamps to embellish her piece.

The stamping was done by painting acrylic paint onto the stamp then pressing onto the fabric. You need to quickly wash stamps after doing that, before the acrylic paint dries into grooves.

Contrast works well in paintings. I suggested a darker background here to make the cat stand out. Of course, I'm not strict about it all, if someone chooses to go against my suggestion, then I'm all for letting their own individual creativity and ideas shine!

Then came sewing our paintings into our wire loops. To make it easier, I used a hammer and a chunky nail to make holes around the edges so the kids could easily sew their chosen wool colour through the edges of the paintings. We used tapestry needles for the sewing.

We found it easier to loosely sew the calico circle in, then go around fixing the tension of the wool later.

Busy, crafty, fun work!

The kids then chose from ribbons, fabric strips, ric-rac, wool, and beaded strands to "flourish" their dream catchers. (Flourish was a word used by one of the kids- love it!)

They also discovered my supply of resin flowers, and so some of them got added to their paintings as well. I made wool loops to attach to the tops for hanging.

Then, the dream catchers were all finished, and our proud guest artists went home with a unique piece of art to hang in their rooms and catch all their wildest dreams!

I hope you enjoyed seeing the process of our latest kids craft project.

Jules :)