Friday, October 11, 2013

Ralph, don't eat the paste!

When I was a kid I could never understand nostalgia. When adults started whistfully telling me about what it was like in their day I would feel an overwhelming desire to beat my head against the wall until I fell into a coma and wouldn't have to endure the subject any longer (yet at about this time I was fascinated by 'the olden days', possibly because I believed everyone got a pony). I promised myself not to bore hapless children with my ramblings about how great things were 20 years ago. 

This hasn't been a difficult promise to keep... until recently. Now I am starting to realise how good things were 20 years ago, not because the world was any better but because I was a kid and didn't have to worry about much. I am being careful to keep my promise, but I have been rembering some of the fun stuff and doing it again (it's fun still but in a slightly different way, a bit like watching old Simpsons episodes you haven't seen since they originally aired and suddenly understanding why your parents laughed at bits that weren't funny).



I spent an afternoon window painting and had a pretty good time at it. I have to say the crafts we did back in my day were cheap. I painted this window using straight black student acrylic paint to make the outlines and PVA glue and food dye for the coloured bits (you could also use a small amount of acrylic paint but I am not sure how transparent it woul be). I used a whiteboard marker to do the outline first but that's because I'm an adult, if I was a kid I would have gone straight to the painting. If you plan to fo the with kids, mixing a small amount of dish washing liquid will help with the clean up (but not adding the dish washing liquid means you can peel the dry PVA glue off your hands which was part of the joy of window painting, I didn't do this bit because I am a boring adult).



While I am being a boring adult, make sure all the paints, glue and markers are nontoxic if kids are going to be dipping their hands in it. It should say on the label that it's nontoxic- but even then it's best not to let them eat glue...