New Take on The Family Canvas Challenge
*I wrote this post 3 months ago and am just now getting it up. My resurgence of creative energy at that time was short-lived, but I’ve been getting stronger and it’s coming back more and more*
June 24th 2019: After 6 months of illness and recovery, I’m finally having a resurgence of creative energy! I still don’t have a ton of physical energy, but I wanted to get back in the studio with my girls and try to finish our canvases we started in November.
Whenever I run the Family Canvas Challenge, I encourage families to collaborate on a shared canvas, but working individually can be just as great. Because we’ve made 3 family canvases together, we often try something new each time to keep it interesting.
For this past challenge, we decided to do individual canvases alongside each other (Aaron was away for work so he didn’t get to join in on this one).
I also came across some cool handmade paper cutouts in the shape of unicorns and butterflies from Paper Source. I thought they would be a fun addition and we could swap them in for the tissue paper layer.
We worked on the first 3 layers (paint, paint pens, & spray paint) during the live challenge at the end of last year, but fell behind when I got sick.
I’ve been wanting to work on my own art for a while, but just didn’t have the energy. When I was in the hospital, a woman who worked there brought me paper and watercolors to help pass the time. As much as I wanted to indulge, they just sat there on the bedside table until my girls came to visit and Ora found herself looking for something to do.
So when I set up the 4th and 5th layers for our canvases and started pasting the paper and fabric shapes onto my canvas, it felt so right. I’m eager to get back to doing more of my own art, so working with my girls was the perfect way to start.
Ora loved the new paper shapes and began playing with them on her canvas. She asked if there was a way to make them stand up or pop out to make it 3-D. I suggested that she look at the shelf and see if she could find something that might work. She found some toothpicks and plugged in the hot glue gun and figured it out herself!
We decided to hang up the canvases before adding the final 2 layers. We may decide to go back to them one day or we may just leave them as is. That’s the fun of the Family Canvas Challenge! It’s just a guide that you may or may not end up following. Each time you do the challenge you can experiment with cutting steps out or adding new steps to the process.
Both girls loved that they had their own canvases to work on this time, but still appreciated that we were doing it together. Even when we aren’t collaborating on a shared project, it’s really fun to work alongside each other and spend the time together in this creative way.
Here are a few pics of the canvases as they are now: Karuna’s canvas, my canvas, and Ora holding her canvas.
I think I’ll be be ready to host another family canvas challenge in the next couple of months as we approach the holidays. I hope you’ll join us! And if you want to get started now, you can find all of the information (for Free!) here.
