So I’ll be honest with you. If you’ve been following my blog, you might have noticed, it’s been somewhat quiet around here. Life with a baby and a 3,5 year-old is pretty fun, but tiresome. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. If not, well, you sure have heard of it… or you’ll have to believe me. So, my activity, not only on this blog, but overall in doing creative stuff is somewhat lower than I would like it to be. But I know it will come back.

Not only is it the life-with-kids part. Here comes the being-honest-with-you part. We also have had a rather somewhat difficult situation at home, which included our finances. So as a result of all these things, we’ve been rather doing low-key things around here.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Low-key can be good. Can make you do fun stuff. And that’s why I want to share with you a few things in the coming time, what we’ve done, all very cheap, easy and fun. I hope you will enjoy them!

Well, I felt like I should write a broader introduction since I haven’t written for a while, but let’s talk more about what you’re here for.

Painting can be fun, right? I don’t know about you, but we love painting. Ever since Liv was a baby, we started painting with edible paints on paper and in the tub, and she loved it ever since. Nowadays, I rarely “prepare” something as a painting activity. She has her own paints, pencils, brushes, etc., and a little desk for her “work” in our workroom. She comes and does whatever she wants with them whenever she feels like it.

But from time to time, it can be pretty fun to paint on something else, rather than on paper. So here’s some ideas!

Plant pots

This was a wonderful summer activity for us. We have actually painted on a few, some in my parent’s garden, some at home on our balcony. Some were “washed clean” again by the rain, but that’s ok. The experience, the fun are important, not the outcome, or as in this case, the lasting of it.

(Btw, no, that is not a filter on the photo, my phone just took it as it is… I guess it doesn’t handle too much light.. but now it just feels like summer, doesn’t it?)

Rocks

We have painted on rocks numerous times. Especially in summer, again. So simple. And you have the additional fun of collecting the rocks and picking for example only flat ones, or whatever you choose are the ones you want. Or, for example, going barefoot through a stream, then finding a nice big rock and leaving a message behind… (Liv was here) ;-)

Cardboard, boxes and cardboard boxes

Cardboard (boxes) are great to paint on, similar like paper (of course), yet you get a different feeling somehow. Of course, you can buy a lot of pretty storage boxes at stores like IKEA or any other shop, really. But when you think about it, there are actually a lot of boxes lying around that you can use. Whether it be from some kind of food, or a box from shoes or something else you bought. We recycled and reused a lot of boxes lately for different purposes. And it’s really nice to add a little touch to them with paint (and paint over those ugly inscriptions and images to hide, of course).

So this is Liv’s new box for her art stuff.

Small box from phone, I think… For small things to put away.

Boxes from a warm drink tasting similar to coffee, except it’s not coffee, but something plant-based. I used to drink it a lot after giving birth, when I wanted to have a placebo feeling of drinking coffee, but tried to drink minimum of it. Now we painted on the boxes and made toys for Sebastian out of it.

(No, that’s not supposed to go in it. That’s one of my weights for sewing. Funny though she tried to put it in..)

A piece of cardboard. Liv’s first drawing of a figure. (If you want to know, it’s actually Tefiti from the movie Moana, coming out of the water. You can even see her green heart. Haha, who would have told that would be my daughter’s first figure drawing…)

Also a piece of cardboard. Liv can put on shoes by herself by now, but she still has trouble deciding which shoe goes on which foot. I made the shoe steps drawing around her actual shoes and then tracing her foot on it, Liv painted the base on which we glued these on.

Wooden boxes from fruits

Similar to cardboard boxes, really.. You buy fruits like oranges or strawberries or whatever in it often. And what do you do with it? We like to paint on it.

Tea-set

I’ve written about this on a post earlier, but I wanted to include it here in this list, since it was such a fun experience! Liv was very interested in pouring into glasses some time ago and we had this old tea-set, which we never used, so one day we decided to decorate it a bit and leave it for Liv to play with.

Fabric

This too, I have written in a separate post, when we made with Liv a shawl for my mother. Liv loved doing this… We should absolutely repeat that some time soon.

Eggs

Now I know, Christmas is around the corner and I’m talking about painting eggs, right? However, even though, it’s something usually done before Easter, you can totally do it any time in the year… right? This was actually on Liv’s bidding. She found paints for painting eggs and really begged me to do this for a few times. I always told her, not right now, because she would come up with it just before we had to go to sleep, or before we had to leave for somewhere. But then finally, the time was right for once and we did it. Who cares it’s middle of autumn… It’s fun to do any time of the year!

Crap, I have however forgotten to do some photos of this, so I’ll have to add those lateeer… sorry for that :-)

Now, I know, all those are nothing ground-breaking. But, as I said in the beginning, we went very low-key, so they’re all things you probably got lying around at home. It might feel refreshing though to look around and see stuff outside the box what you might use.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve had some fun surfaces to paint on! Anything goes! :-)