Mermaid Swim Bag Tutorial

Hey everybody!
Its summer here in NZ although you would be right to question, second long weekend in a row, second set of shit weather to go with them, windy windy windy and grey and rainy today.  This is shaping up to be the worst summer ever! we havent even put our pool up yet.

So to have a bit of summer fun we decided to decorate Indi's swim bag for the days when it is hot and she does go swimming at the beach when she is at little school.
Her swim bag is currently a calico bag, plain as, so we wanted to make it a
'Mermaid Swim Bag'

Now I have done this stuff with her before and when you say paint 'inside the circle only'! after tapeing off a nice round circle she just cant help herself and goes nuts in the forbidden zone, yay for childs freedom of artistic expression but sometimes you wanna make something cool as a kinda momma kiddie collaboration, so here is what I do.

You can see that all she is painting here is a circle, the bag is hidden inside this lovely newspaper package, away from the mess, and here is how...

take a sheet of news paper and get her to trace around a plate...

once done mum cuts the circle out, keeping the outer intact and throwing away the middle....

now place wide tape around the whole circle.....

and then trim it down to like 2cm and try to keep it perfect, this will then be stuck on your bag in the place you want and then wrap the remaining paper around the bag and tape it up out of sight..

now the kids can go crazy, and paint the whole thing in....
mermaid colours of course aqua, pink, purple, white

half dry with a hairdryer....

we use real shells for printing, this one is a scallop

with a bit of masking tape on the back as a handle....

paint up (done by mum)...

and print (done by child)....

and repeat, voila!....

we then added dots and purple glitter and then gold glitter, swished it all around and threw the excess glitter off and then dried again....

yay for glitter!....

so the paint we use is house paint test pots, the same paint I always use, they are cheap, come in 100s of colours, hold onto anything, fabric, wood, rock etc ohh and houses! and wash up in water...
You can use fabric paints if you want to as well....

once little miss hair dryer has finished, she can rip the paper and tape off

and here is our bag..

so here is where the collaboration comes in, mummy does the finishing touches because thats what mummies are good at!

so we swap jobs and she takes the photos while I draw mermaid curly wurlies and a border....

because everything looks better with a bit of curly wurlies...

and here is our finished collaboration, the glitter will eventually wash out bit by bit, but it looks amazing for now..

** a mermaid swim bag **
(she is looking at herself in the mirror instead of at me, ohh the vanity of a 3 year old, I love it!)

swim into this project with your little ones and everyone wins.
Its an amazing feeling when you both have fun and both are able to produce something that dosent look like a daycare art project
Indi is on the brink of 4 so she knows when something looks like crap, and it makes these sort of art projects easier when you go into them with a fail safe plan.
We spend plenty of time experimenting with crazy painting and printing so its nice to produce a good quality product together once in a while.

Have fun and extend from this idea
let me know what you get up to

much love beautiful mermaids
xxx
Sheree