With St Patricks Day round the corner I thought that making a card to celebrate would be a nice opportunity for me and The Toddler to mess around with some paints. ‘Making’ is his current favorite thing to do (other than being Batman, obviously) and with the weather being less than 100% at the moment this was a great indoor project that we could do.
My original plan was to do some potato printing onto some paper. Look, I made a really cute stamp and everything. If you do choose to do potato printing I highly recommend drawing your image first onto the potato before you start cutting as its a bit trickier than you’d expect! Also its handy to dry out your cut potato on a bit of kitchen paper before you paint as this will help it to carry the paint better.
However The Toddler, being three, did not appreciate my plan for this St Patricks Day card and instead decided that he would use the stamp to ‘paint’ with. “Up and down Mummy!” I’m fairly certain that at one point he was also using it to draw directions to the local soft play. He has attempted this before!
If your toddler is also likely to want to spread some paint around then you could try printing out our free shamrock template and they could decorate that. You could then cut it out and stick it onto a card.
I’m not a huge fan of forcing small kids to do art how I think they should do it, so we had a slight change of plan here. We waited for the paint to dry and then cut shamrock shapes out of it instead. Out comes the ever faithful glue (“Yay! Sticking!” Big hugs.) and our card is finished. Actually, I think I rather like it this way.
And if you like this card do Pin or Tweet it! Sharing is caring!!
The best laid plans! I agree that it is much better to let children go with the flow and let them decide what to do during a creative project and then you can always use the results of their creativity as you have with your pretty card. I often do the project in my head whilst sitting next to the toddler who is up to all sorts just to plant the seed in their head that there are other ways to paint that don’t include squishing your hands in all the paint and then squelching it across the paper. This sometimes works and it keeps me from interfering with their work!
Great idea!
Great idea, so funny that your liitle one had other plans. It’s great to get them painting, it doesn’t really matter what the end result is 🙂
My 11 year old daughter loves anything crafty! She loves making cards and bracelets and drawing etc! Great card!!! 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Love that he draws maps – excellent future career there! And I never had any luck with potato prints either – it always turned into finger painting and chaos!
Well he’s told me that he’s going to be an artist when he grows up but I’m still holding out for (very well paid) human rights lawyer 😉
Lovely idea of a potato stamp, shame it didn’t see the final cut… but artists are always right and have to pick their own way 🙂
Who am I to argue with an artist?!
The best things come from a change to plans! These look great 🙂 Thanks for the tips for your original idea though, I’ve not done potato prints for years so this just jogged my memory. I think maybe this will be something me and my little one do soon! I love your finished card. You are right, it’s always best to let your toddler explore in their own way.
I love the potato stamp, not sure my leaf would look as good as that if I carved it! Great cards
Love that he wanted to use the potato as a paintbrush! A cute card and easy craft to do and quick thinking to turn it around with the cutting out shamrock shapes x
i love potato printing! so fun, and can be done by anyone, any age.
oh who cares if it didn’t go to plan, still looks fab!
Totally, no point in trying to force a three year old to do anything, trust me!!
Good tips on the potato printing – we tried it once – reasonably successfully to make a Christmas card design but my girls were a bit bigger so we avoided using it as a paintbrush idea! Love what you did with the result though and sticking is always popular!
I’m not as good as I’d like at doing crafts with the kids. I’m not sure if it is because I don’t like the cleaning up or I can’t let go and let them do their own thing. I love the way your card finished and how you adapted your plans
I think the card looks great! We often have to change things if Peakles wants to do things her way – and most of the time it works out better than the original times.
I love the finished product and I’m very impressed with your potato cutting skills!
Thank you 🙂
I’m afraid I’m such a control freak that I had to stop doing craft when they were little for fear of taking over. You’ve done well to go with the flow. Now mine are older they create way better stuff than I ever could!
Arguably my three year old already paints better than I do 😉