Tape Resist Letter Canvases

I totally dropped the ball on Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts this year, since we were spending all of our time outside this spring, so I've been wanting to do an art project that was more a keepsake than our normal process masterpieces.

I think we nailed it! While this is still basically our normal process piece, on canvas, with the first letter of their name resist, makes it a frameable and displayable art work.

I bought the 11 inch x 14 inch canvases at Walmart for $4.97 for a 3 pack. They also had 8 x 10, 12 x 12 and 12 x 16 sizes.

I've been wanting to try the new Frogtape, which is coated with a gel that supposedly won't let the paint seep underneath like the blue painter's tape often will. It caught my curiosity. Since my dad had a commercial painting company I worked at when I was right out of highschool, I knew the limitations of the blue tape and was not a fan.

Most of our activities are process-oriented, and I really didn't hold out much hope that this one would turn out well. However, the Frogtape did an excellent job, even with the children running trucks over it and mushing paint all over.

I used a 2 inch top and bottom margin and 1 1/2 inch side margins to space out the letters and used a craft knife to cut the tape cleanly with a metal straight edge. 

Since I didn't want these to be a mass of gray and brown, we did color mixing in batches. They first painted red, then blue, mixing into purple. I cleaned all the tools, and even took a blowdrier to the paintings to "set" the colors.

Then we moved on to yellow/blue/green after which I cleaned the tools and dried them once again. Then on to red/yellow/orange.

Even the littlest ones participated, but their attention spans only made it through the first set of colors. We will be going back to add the rest of the colors and finish theirs through the week.

The children were asked to choose a different texture tool for each color, but of course kept coming back to their favorites. They did well at sharing between them.

 They were encouraged to work in the white spaces and to cover the canvas, only not all at once with the same color.

The next day, we came back and the children removed the tape. It was a wonderful surprise for them, as we had not done this before. The first question, of course, was if they got to paint inside the letter now. That would be a "no!"

To ensure the white stays white, I sprayed each canvas with clear lacquer 

and added a sawtooth hanger, centered and about an inch down, to the back with super glue.

This was a great activity with a great result.

Tags: painting, art, canvas, preschool, pre-k, daycare, child, care, homeschool, tape, resist, letter, alphabet, process, product, name, mother's day, father's day, grandparent's day, christmas, present