The Jabberwocky Hand-Painted Step Stool Project

The Jabberwock by Graeme Base

This is what my little feral one wanted to paint on his step stool... himself... with spray paint.

Realistic painting project for a four year old? Maybe not, but I agreed that we had to try to make it happen.

Here we go...

The Feral One with his blank canvas.

The Feral One priming his stool

Me making the stencil.

Taping the stencil to the painted stool.

The feral One checking out his handiwork

The Feral One and Snaggletooth adding some texture

The boys' creation

I added the final details

The Feral One poses with The Jabberwock.

Here is a link to Jabberwocky which is a favorite poem of mine and The Feral One. Enjoy!

Furniture Painting...With Kids!

My dear husband and I have been quite busy lately (I mean, aren't we all, right?) and working a lot on the weekends. We've taken on some serious tag team parenting - I paint for six hours on Saturday till the end of nap time; he goes into the office on Saturday afternoon till dinner; he goes to a casting call all day Sunday; I leave the house to work on some sketches on Sunday evening. We kind of miss each other. 

We promised some actual, for reals family time this past weekend. The feral one (older brother) wanted family time to involve painting furniture since I haven't let him help me lately. I thought that was an awesome idea. Dear husband was not so sure. Luckily, the feral one and I are good at ignoring dear husband's voice of reason. 

Here's the play-by-play of Saturday afternoon's kid-friendly-ish painting project.

Step 1. Find a piece of furniture in the house that we don't care about. Pretty easy for us since so much of our furniture is from Target or Ikea. We found a porch side table that seemed perfect.

Step 2. Design decisions. "Feral one, what should we paint on the table?" "A dinosaur eating a honey badger!" "Obviously. Why did I ask?"

Step 3. Draw and cut out a stencil out of contact paper and affix it to the table top.

Step 4: Give the boys paint pens and let them go to town. Let paint dry.

Step 5: Tape around the table legs, give boys paint pens and let them at it again.

Step 6: Add a couple of finishing touches as directed by the feral one. "Mom, can you make them talk?" "Yeah, buddy! Of course."

And done! True awesomeness, right?

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