Bubble Wrap Snow Printing

Our Christmas season is almost over (believe it or not we still have one more family gathering this weekend) but it's never too early to start creating our thank you cards. We love thinking of hands-on ways to create our thank you cards. In the past this has included creating Potato Print Snowmen or Magic Word Thank You Cards. Other times we just like using some of our process art to create thank you cards, like when we paint with Monster Trucks.

This week we were inspired by the newly fallen snow to create our own snow printings. We've painted with bubble wrap before, but this was the first time we created an easy strategy for printing with it. We used our new strategy to print onto tree collages for cards. 

Materials: 

Card stock or construction paper in blues and greens (usually 8 x 11 inches)

Washable White Poster Paint

Glue Stick

Bubble Wrap

Wooden Block (we took ours from our set in the playroom) 

Scotch Tape

Preparation: 

Cut the blue card stock into 4 x 5.5 rectangles, this becomes the base of the card. 

Cut small trees of various sizes out of the green card stock (older kids could do this themselves.) 

Cut the bubble wrap into small square pieces, use scotch tape to attach the bubble wrap to one side of the block. 

To Create the Card:

Kiddos select different trees to glue onto the cards. In our house the boys tried doing some both horizontally and vertically. 

Next paint the bubble wrap on the block with the white poster paint. We found it was better if the kids went a little lighter on the paint than they originally thought. 

Finally, use the painted bubble wrap block to print the paint onto the card. Hold the block bubble wrap side down over the card, and press the block down onto the card. Depending on the size of the block it might needed to pressed onto the card 2 to 3 times. (We also found that it helped to print it on scrap paper the first time after we painted it, it removed a little of the excess paint.) 

The result is white "snow" marks printed on top of the trees. We also found we liked it better when the whole block didn't show as there were some lighter parts. This made it look a little more natural. 

This technique could be used on other designs too. We added a few yellow moons to our later cards in the batch, and really liked how it looked. 

It's probably not a surprise that the boys mostly loved just doing the block printing. By the end of our cards I was actually the one gluing on the trees and they were the ones printing with the block. But this way I'm considering these cards a "group effort." 

Got bubble wrap left over the receiving holiday gifts? Create some easy thank you cards with it! 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties.