A quick but fun little art work:
As I can’t be bothered to sew, I bought some plain canvas shopping bags. They are only a euro or so each. The canvas printing paints are a bit more pricy, however, they’ll last for quite a few small projects (4 jars about 20 euros). On top of that we used 2 bruised apples cut in two. I cut a simple “handle” in the “apple stamp” to make it fit better the hands of 2 and 3 year old children.
After the preparations I put a thin layer of paint on an apple half and my kids stamped away.
I may be biased but I’ll much rather use these bags than any with a sterile ad on!
When the paint is dried, we still need to iron it on through a paper towel to stick.
I got the idea to use apples as stamps from a Finnish Facebook crafts group a while ago. I couldn’t find that post anymore but I am sure it is not a unique idea anyway. However, I had to try (with my sons permission) whether this idea could easily be developed to e.g. suit older kids as well. You can make up your mind about turning the prints into butterflies (but I wasn’t allowed to add a bit of pattern to them) but surely there is potential for more variation:
Free But Fun 
[…] don’t have to be printed on briefs and it is the same paint we’ve used on fabric before: after it has dried it needs to be ironed on through a paper towel to make the paint […]
[…] things and shapes seems to be a fun thing for 3-4 yo children and their mum: Here we’ve used apples and here we printed with a screen. And now I have more tea towels to […]
This is beautiful! Your low cost craft is awesome! We used to use many different kinds of greens for these printing, like the lotus roots, potato, tomato, lady’s finger, etc. I have never printed on a canvas bag though. And I like your tip of ironing the prints to make them stay.
Hmm, using a variety of veggies for the printing is an awesome idea! I may have to try that one one day!
I think it depends on the type of paint you use, if the ironing helps, maybe better check the contents?
Cost of a canvas bag- 1 Euro
The idea of using apples to make innovative butterfly prints- Priceless!! 🙂
Fun, huh?!
The butterfly variation is good. Not that an apple doesn’t look like a delicious decoration in its original form!
I agree with Kate that it’s often hard to make things for less than you can buy (the cheap version of them anyway) – not to mention the time saved! (I also agree with Expat Eye there above 😉 )
Time saving, especially with things less enjoyable really is pretty high on my list!
To do something to get our modem fixed is not that appealing when knowing that it involves loads of queuing on the phone…
I’m so relieved that you couldn’t be arsed sewing – you’d just be too perfect then 😉
Haha, “perfect”; I was just thinking that I really should unpack those last boxes from the move. After all, we moved about 2 years ago… we have our priorities! 😉
You seem to be keeping busy doing much more important stuff! 😉
You are so crafty! I love it!
Thanks, everyone enjoys something! 🙂
Awesome!!
And, for crafts like that, I’ve found that I can’t make the bags for any cheaper than I can buy them. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to not sew your own bag!
Thanks, especially for the excuse to be lazy even in the future! 🙂
Seriously though, it is a good point, sewing cheap things like bags wouldn’t be cost effective unless there’d be some fabric to recycle. (Which reminds me of a book with patterns for sewing children’s clothes that I recently found among mum’s stuff. It must have belonged to my grandmother, printed around/just after WWII, and it started with “it’s preferable to use fabric for the clothes but if there’s no fabric, you can also make the clothes out of paper”. Whoa!!! Times change, fortunately! )
LOL! It was very common here to make clothes and curtains out of the sacks that flour came in! Fortunately, the sacks were cotton!
I have a blanket that was made for my dad out of his old pajamas, and several of his old pajamas were hand made out of the flour sacks. It’s is amazing to me.
It IS amazing, such a short while ago really! But the blanket is something to save, what a memory to hand over to mr T one day!