Art | But I Smile Anyway...

Three Ingredient Puffy Paint

24 Mar 2018 56 Comments

by Ritu in Art, Children, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Art, Arts and Crafts, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, EYFS, Nursery, Puffy Paint

You know me, I’m a teacher, and an Early Years teacher at that.

This means a lot of hands-on sensory activities to develop and stimulate young minds, and lots of chances for me to experiment with great arts and crafts ideas I find on the interweb!

This week, we tried out Puffy Paint!

Puffy Paint

Literally, three ingredients!

PVA/white/school glue
White shaving foam
Food colouring

And some containers and old lolly sticks to stir.

All you need to do is pour some glue in a pot and add approximately the equal amount of shaving foam to it. I used around 2 tablespoons of glue then squirted the shaving foam in.
Use the lolly stick to fold these two ingredients together, as if folding sugar into egg whites. You don’t want to lose the air in the foam.
Once at the required consistency, add a few drops of food colouring, and mix again.

And there you have it!

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Puffy paint ready for action! #puffypaint #eyfs #creative #artsandcrafts

A post shared by Ritu B (@ritubhathalwrites) on Mar 23, 2018 at 1:40am PDT

I made up 8 pots, including a white one, and the kids loved it!

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Puffy paintings looking Good! #eyfs #creative #art #puffypaint

A post shared by Ritu B (@ritubhathalwrites) on Mar 23, 2018 at 4:51am PDT

You can use a brush to blob the paint on paper or card, then once completed, leave to dry, overnight preferably, to get a wonderfully textured finish that is soft and spongy to touch!

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Puffy paint is really cool! It dries soft and puffy yet firm! #puffypaint #eyfs #creative #artsandcrafts #sensoryplay

A post shared by Ritu B (@ritubhathalwrites) on Mar 23, 2018 at 5:27am PDT

The children really enjoyed the different feel of the paint, and they were intrigued by my sample painting, with these foam-like areas that were soft to touch.

They are so excited to be able to take their works of art home after the weekend!

Bunchems! #SundayBlogShare

25 Jul 2017 50 Comments

by Ritu in Art, Children, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Bunchems, Creativity, instagram, Lil Princess

Have you heard of Bunchems?

They are an arts and crafts toy, little hook and loop balls that connect together so you can Well, Lil Princess really wanted some and was rewarded with a set at Christmas, but it’s taken a while for her to get them out to play…

This was what she made.

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And we even got a shout out from Bunchems on Instagram!

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Love a bit of creativity!

Fine Art Friday – Music and Sketches

16 Jun 2017 34 Comments

by Ritu in Art, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Art, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Music, Punjabi Folk, Sketches

The other day, I was going through my bedside cabinet drawers. They are fit to bursting, and something had fallen down the back, preventing the drawers from closing fully.

Instead of dislodging the offending item, closing the drawer, and getting back to whatever I was meant to be doing, I started a reminisce.

The bottom drawer is full of musical song-books.

Ones I helped to create.

During my teenage years, we had lots of family weddings, and my cousins and I decided we wanted to learn some of the traditional songs and dances so, going forward, we could continue the traditions. Of course, though I can speak and understand Punjabi, I cannot read or write it.

So came the fun job of trying to write it in Roman English, Phonic Punjabi!

And my ‘book’ was very popular within the family. For my own wedding, I typed and printed several copies which ended up in the far-flung corners of the world! This resulted in a few reproduced fancy copies being made, and adapted over the years!

The top left one was my original one, then my cousins printed them ‘offically’ for use at their weddings

And from my little idea there were off-shoots! My mum collects them whenever she goes to a wedding and sees them, then gives them to me!

Some of the ‘spin-offs’!

And also, as I dug deeper into the drawer, I found a whole heap of printed out Bollywood song lyrics! Cue a good hour of me sitting on the floor, surrounded by books, and paper, crooning to myself, hoping I wasn’t waking the children! (Don’t ask me to sing, because you know me, I probably would break out into song with not much encouragement!)

Then I came across a sketchbook from my GCSE years. I didn’t take Art as a subject, but I always enjoyed doodling and came across these pictures.

Palm tree paradise? Yes, please!

No, it’s not a self-portrait! I was never allowed a fringe growing up, I rebelled and had one cut in my late 30’s!

I think this may have been inspired by the Ball we had in my final year at school, which I didn’t go to!

So there you have it! Ritu’s Artwork, and Musical Endeavours!!!!

Have a great Friday Night Peeps!

Duncan Grant – The Artist

30 Jan 2017 32 Comments

by Ritu in Art, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Artist, Blake Gallery, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Duncan Grant, Gravesend, Painter, Portrait

I went to an art exhibition yesterday.

Quite a different thing for me to do, with my little family.

The painter is the husband of a colleague of mine and he was exhibiting his artworks at the local gallery. I took the children a few years back to another exhibition of his, but they were much younger, so it didn’t mean much, other than being able to say they had seen their teacher there! Having said that, Lil Princess was definitely touched by what she saw that day, and wanted to paint!

His name is Duncan Grant. Not the other, slightly more well known Duncan Grant, who was also an artist!

No, this Duncan Grant is a local gent! And his paintings are heavily influenced by his surroundings, as well as whatever he is thinking of at the time!

After the first exhibition, Duncan was rather unwell, and after a long stint in hospital his styles altered slightly, but his work was, and still is, pretty amazing!

The top painting is actually a self-portrait from when he was unwell.

Here is a series of three landscape paintings, portraying the Thames and the view we have from here of Essex. The top painting is of fishermen gathering their nets.

The painting below just made me giggle!

Lil Man was pretty impressed with this next one as it is where he plays cricket!

I shall quote from his website, which you can find here.

I was born in Gravesend, Kent in 1965 and am proud to be from the bottom right hand corner of Britain where I still live.

In my work, I try to express the strange goings on inside my head and using shape, colour and texture, show my own interpretations of what I see in nature and also my own take on everyday life.

My style of art is self-taught and I paint mainly sitting on the sofa listening to the TV with a small, hairy Jack Russell terrier at my side – my paint covered sofa bears testament to this!

I enjoy painting and I am pleased that people appreciate my work. I work full-time in the real world and I live happily in Gravesend with my wife Davina, two cats (Charlie and Katie) and two Jack Russell terriers (Maisie and Billy).

Something else rather cool. A few years back, Duncan was trying to hone his people painting skills, and he threw open an offer. Send me your photo so I can paint you and practice painting people. I did this and the final portrait was wonderful! But I never got round to actually buying it from him, for one reason or another.

Well, yesterday, when we got there, he handed me a bag with my very own Duncan Grant original painting in it! And refused to accept any payment! I was touched!