Easy Baby Art

So I've been hitting up baby showers and kid birthday parties like it's my job lately.  As much fun as I have picking out baby clothes (o em gee I'm not even being sarcastic, I really do love it) I wanted to start giving slightly more personal gifts.

In my opinion, art is REALLY personal.  It's really hard to give anyone art because everyone has different tastes, and if you give them something they don't like, they still feel obligated to put it up (at least for a little while)  But, I like to break my own rules.  So I stocked up on plastic dinosaurs from the dollar store, acrylic paint, printed paper, and a few frames from Ikea (Ribba and Sondrum lines).  I've seen tons of cute projects involving plastic toys and spray paint on Pinterest like this and this, but I like how mine are more of a minimalist artwork.

I started out by hand painting my dinosaurs with acrylic paint. At first my plan was to do something over the top trendy, like ombre dinosaurs on ikat and chevron paper.  But then I realized I didn't have ikat or chevron paper that matched my paint.  So I just had fun with it.  Boys get blue and argyle, girls get pink and florals, obvs.  And clearly, I did still manage to get in some ombre action.

I have to say - I was not a fan of the acrylic paint on the plastic.  It didn't cover evenly, and was sticky to the touch even after drying for a few days. It even peeled off in spots if I held it for too long, like peeling off glue from your skin. I re-spray painted a few of them (and the gold ones started with spray paint) which covered muuuuch better.  I sprayed everything with sealant and that seemed to fix the stickiness and sealed everything up nicely.  If I make more of these, I will only use spray paint next time.

I used my hot glue gun to attach the dinosaurs to the paper, and carefully taped my printed paper to the back of the matting (which I flipped to show the wrong side out because I wanted a crisp white and they had more of a cream hue on the right side). I slid the glass between the paper and covering on the back, so that someday when either the kids rip off the dinosaurs (they are pretty sturdy, but definitely detachable), or the parents feel they have had it up for a long enough amount of time to satisfy me, they can actually re-use the frames for real photos or maybe artwork their kids made.

Obviously Allen helped.  I don't think anyone has a more helpful cat than we do.

Ella was not amused that her towel on the back of the couch kept letting her sink in between the cushion and the back.

If looks could kill...

I also got this map printed from Jenna Sue Design.  The colors were lovely and the paper was so-soft.  I strongly suggest the "vintage wash" look, even if you have a more modern space.  It just came out gorgeously. She has a ton of prints available to personalize, and everything arrived quickly and carefully packaged.  Her blog is super cute too.

So I hope the mom's and their babies enjoy their easy 3-D baby art as much as I enjoyed making them. There is nothing more fun that sitting around painting small objects and trying to keep your cats out of the paint on a Saturday afternoon, amIright?