Cotton Ball Heart Painting Crafts for Kids

How would you like to create a cherished work of art with your young child with minimal effort and time? Check out this easy cotton ball heart painting crafts for kids! I found that by using cotton balls and clothespins (and with Mommy supervision) there was actually minimal mess with this craft. Plus, it is really pretty, isn’t it? I can’t wait for it to dry so I can hang it on our wall!

How to Make Cotton Ball Heart Painting Crafts for Kids

Materials

• 8 x 10 white canvas (if you shop craft store sales you can get a great deal on these!)
• pre-cut foam heart (I used a heart from the same pack I made the Heart Suncatchers with)
• double-sides tape or any non-permanent adhesive
• washable paint in whatever colors you choose (we used pink, red, purple, and yellow)
• a cotton ball for each color of paint (you may want a few extra cotton balls on hand)
• a clothespin for each cotton ball
• a plastic tray or paper plate for the paint

How to create this painting!

1. Stick the foam heart to the center (or wherever you want) of the canvas with adhesive. I used double-sided tape because that is what I had, and it worked perfectly. You don’t want the heart to stay there forever, but you don’t want it moving around during the painting either.
2. Pour the paint and stick one cotton ball on the end of each clothespin. I then dipped each clothespin/cotton combo into a paint color. The idea is that your kiddo won’t mix and match and make the ‘mud’ color. However, it is perfectly fine if a little color blending happens.
3. Now you are ready to create! I showed Sweet Pea the concept of using the paint dippers to ‘dot’ the canvas. She caught on pretty quickly but her first instinct was to just swoosh the cotton ball like a paintbrush. That would have been quite lovely too… but I wanted her to get practice following simple directions so I just gently guided her back to the dip and dot method.
4. Sweet Pea was a pro. The really fun part for me was that because there were four dippers, I could help her fill up the canvas.
5. When we were done, I gently peeled off the foam heart and voila, beautiful heart painting just in time for Valentine’s Day!

This craft was really quite easy, even though paint was involved.

Total time from set up to clean up? Maybe 20 minutes. Now, that is the kind of easy craft I want to do all the time!

Would you like to see some other cute and easy Valentine’s Day craft ideas? Well, here is a short list. I hope you get to try this craft out or some of these other ones.. because seriously, they are all so adorable!

http://www.stillplayingschool.com/2015/02/salt-and-glue-watercolor-hearts.html
http://lalymom.com/2015/01/valentines-day-activities-kids-3-low-prep-busy-bags.html#_a5y_p=3188024
http://www.muminthemadhouse.com/2015/01/15/family-fingerprint-relief-heart-art-canvas/
http://www.kitchencounterchronicle.com/kid-made-owl-valentines/
http://www.craftsbycourtney.com/how-to-crafts/paper-straw-valentines-day-easel-kids/

Thanks for reading and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Sara