Every year, the kids and I wreck the dining room creating handmade Christmas decorations for them to give their teachers (yes, I’m that tight). We generally use some kind of process art technique to create them as I like the freedom it gives. Last year we had a go at making alcohol ink baubles, here’s […]
Process Art for Children
Process art is the creation of art where the process used to create it is part of the end result. Sometimes called open ended art, process art has no fixed out outcome. I love it because there is no pressure to achieve something particular and quite often what the kids create is better than what I create.
Process art is often messy, but if you don’t like mess then just wait until the weather is good because most of them can be done outside.
What are the Benefits of Process Art Activities for kids?
Process art is great for children because it allows them to express their creativity. Without the pressure to create a specific result they are free to explore the colours and materials any way they want. Children who aren’t that good at traditional drawing and painting can have the satisfaction of creating something truly beautiful. Process art also levels everyone’s abilities, the oldest child (or even the adult) won’t necessarily create the best work.
Process art is a great family activity. Even really young children can get involved in some of the activities and it really is as much fun for the adults as the children.
What Can You Do With Process Art?
We all know that it can be difficult to know what to do with the huge volume of art that children create. We’ve found various different uses for our process art creations over the years. Some of what we’ve made has been used as gifts. The fact that any one can create an attractive result with process art methods means we’ve been able to create some lovely gifts over the years for friends and family. We’ve also created end of year and Christmas gifts for teachers.
Lots of our process art creations have also been used as greetings cards. Sometimes this is by working on a piece of A4 card and folding it into a card shape and sometimes by cutting shapes like hearts and starts from our creations and sticking them onto cards.
We also sometimes use our work as wrapping paper and make gift tags from it. It works best for smaller presents and makes the gift really personal.
You might also like to have a look at our seasonal process art projects.
Melted Crayon Glass Ornaments
I’m back with the melting crayons today but the final result is very different from the melted crayon tree decorations. These are glass baubles with crayons melted inside them and the result is quite grown up and elegant. I did these melted crayon glass ornaments when my children were 3 and 5 and really it […]
Melted Crayon Cards for Easter
While I’m not a big fan of crafts, I do love a bit of process art. These melted crayon cards for Easter involve my number one favourite craft activity, melting stuff! They are simple to make but do require an adult to do the melting bit. What you’ll need to make melted crayon cards: Some […]
Melted Bead Christmas Tree Decorations
I recently wrote about creating Christmas tree decorations from melted crayons to give as teacher gifts. Another teacher gift we’ve done are melted bead Christmas tree decorations. While the process to make these if fairly similar the results look totally different. This post contains affiliate links (identified with a *), if you buy after clicking you’ll […]
Melted Crayon Christmas Tree Decorations
Let me start by saying I am not a crafter. I don’t like it and I don’t possess the attention to detail to be good at it. What I do like is process art. In process art, the means of creating the art is clearly part of the end piece. My favourite kind of process […]