January – We made these birch trees by painting a little black paint on white paper and and smearing it across the paper keeping the paper mostly white.  Once dry, they cut it into strips with it being slightly thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top.  The bird is a red circle cut in half for the body and the other half into thirds for the other triangles for the wings, tail, etc.

February – The idea was to have it look like the bottom right, but not all the kids had the patience to do that.  I had a little heart stamp and they used paint to stamp the hearts onto the tree after they drew and colored the trunk.

March – We painted a pot of gold and finger painted on the rainbow.  (And make a mess all over the bathroom sink with all the washing between colors.  ;p  )  We added gold glitter glue to the pot after the paint dried

April – Potato stamping.  I actually wouldn’t recommend this.  It was the first time I tried it.  I used a spoon to scrap out a halved potato to make the design and then they dipped it in paint to stamp.  As you can see… they didn’t really work out that great.  Some paint got clumpy and some didn’t take well.  It sounded fun, but chalking this one up to a Pinterest Fail.

May – We made blue blotches with paint all over a white paper, let it dry, and then I printed out a raindrop template I found on a google image search and they traced and cut out the raindrops, added them to string and we taped them onto the paper, so they are hanging.  

June – the girls scribbled all over a sheet of white copy paper with vibrant colored pencils (markers would also work) and then cut out all the shapes on my Silhouette (you can do this with a punch or by hand, but the Silhouette is much faster).  The kids then glued them around a black circle to form flower petals.

June – closeup

July – This was fun!  I have always wanted to try to make our own scratch magic paper and it totally worked beautifully!  So, you have to fill the entire paper by coloring with oil pastels (if there are spots missed, it won’t be able to be scratched off).  After the paper is all colored, then you paint black acrylic paint over the entire thing.  We had to put a second layer in some spots.  Then set it aside to dry.  Once dry, you can take some scratch tools and make your design.  I noticed it is more vibrant when you scratch a thicker line like the bottom right.  🙂

August – The girls drew a sun with 7 arrows and I cut out the words of Psalm 27:1 on my Silhouette to glue on.  I helped draw out where the arrows should go with the younger kids, but they did all the painting and glueing!  

September –  We used some scrap tissue paper squares to glue onto the large paper and layed the butterfly Cricut cutout on top to give it a stained glass look.

October – These tree tops are painted onto coffee filters with water colors and set to dry, then they cut out the tree shapes, glued them onto the paper and added the trunks that I cut out on my Silhouette. (you can cut these by hand or paint them on as well)

November – We used markers to color in some corn cobs and pumpkins

December – Q-tip painting the trees with ornaments.