Retro Kid Art Fun

If you are anything like me, I am always on the lookout for fun yet easy crafts the kids can do, especially on those chilly winter weekends where it's too cold or wet to go out and play for long periods of time.  Well thanks to some prompting from my oldest daughter we found a pretty cheap, but very FUN retro-style craft that I had no idea they would love so much.

fuzzy velvet kid art

We cleaned out a few closets last week and came across something from my husband's teen years.  It was a large poster you could intricately color that came with pens in a long tube. He and his friends back in the day had worked on it together.   My oldest was intrigued by this and wanted to do one of her own.  We were not even sure they still make something like that any more, so we went to Fred Meyer (the last place he remembers buying them) and lo and behold they had some!  Ha.  The trouble was the only pictures available to color in the tubes were very randomly weird... like a giant ugly pirate with a treasure or frogs in a swamp.  Get this, the only other one available was a picture of wine glasses in a vineyard background.  I wondered sarcastically, WHO is their target market?  Ten-year-old boys and 50+ women?  Interesting.  Totally cracked me up.

Next to the posters were some fuzzy black coloring posters.  I think I've passed these by a million times without giving them a second thought.  Most of them were quite ugly, train station, hippie unicorns, etc.  I DID however find some cool Celtic knots which reminded me of stained glass, so I bought a pack for $4 and was surprised to find out when we got home that there were actually two posters to color.  Sweet.  The girls were very excited to get started!

A fun way to pass a cold Saturday afternoon with some "stained glass" artwork

My youngest just turned five, and I thought the lines might be too hard for her but luckily these were wider, kid-friendly lines and she went to town.  She was having a blast!  She was even changing the colors mid-line, something I as a perfectionist would have never done... but it was turning out cute anyway.

The packaging claims it is "goof proof" because the fuzzy velvet part keeps colors in line.

The older two picked a corner and started working into the middle.  They knew we were "sharing" the two pictures so they would flit back and forth between the two pictures adding the colors where they thought they should go.  They probably worked on it for a good 45 minutes before taking a break.  They went back a little later to finish it up.  We were all rather pleased with the results. 

This turned out pretty cool.  We decided to hang these on our pantry door in the kitchen

So if you have some kids (or grandkids) that need a little something to do one afternoon or on a dreary winter weekend, I think we have found a pretty fun diversion that can turn into some awesome little works of art.