Today was SUPPOSE to be our first try at the library as a whole group. If all went well we would continue to go once a week the rest of the summer, more on that in a minute….
First, we made personalized bags for our library books. I found these waterproof canvas bags at our Dollar Tree. Great material, not-so-great print. Very 70’s hippie chick…
I had the great idea that we could paint over them, but I knew that regular acrylics wouldn’t cut it. So, I pulled out my latex paint samples. If you don’t have any, they are only like $2-$3 at Lowes. It’s a great excuse to try out all those funky colors you would NEVER paint your house. Or maybe you would, whatever floats your boat…
1. Mask off the section you want to paint with contact paper.
2. Paint in the area with your base color. Mine was white. Think of this like prepping a canvas. With the type of material these bags were made of, it was basically the same thing. I ended up having to do 2 coats to cover the flower prints. They probably could have used even one more coat. Allow to dry between coats. (Note to self: do NOT leave an open jar of latex paint sitting on your bedroom floor, where 2 year-old daughter will paint on your carpet and cutting mat. Yeah, should have seen that one coming…)
3. After the base coats were dry, I let the kids go at it. Some tried painting pictures with the available colors, others just went abstract.
4. Peel off the contact paper. We painted our names and a border in fabric paint. I also added one little shape in glow-in-the-dark paint on each bag, because my kids love a little glow-in-the-dark action. :)
(This picture is before I added a green border.)
5. Put them in the garage to dry so that no one touches them while the fabric paint dries.
6. Freak out when you see your 2 year-old daughter walking across the freshly painted bags, making names illegible, and tracking paint all over the bags and garage floor. Great, just great…
7. Take a deep breath and apologize to everyone especially the 2-year-old as everyone reassures you that it’s okay. It’s just paint and it’s not that bad.
I should have had a clue that this was just the beginning to our day’s troubles. Um, no…
The plan was to go to the post office to mail off our Flat Stanleys, after lunch, and then to the library. That was the plan…
Let’s just say all chaos broke loose when we entered the post office. One kid was like, “Wow, this is the post office?! Awesome! Let me run around in circles!” Another kid was like, “Let’s see how many things I can pull off shelves before my mom notices.” Another was like, “Listen to how loud I can yell to all the other kids!” Another was like “Let’s hide from mom and see if she freaks out because she thinks I’m lost, or worse, kidnapped!” The last child was like, “Let’s hang on these metal detector things until I set them off, and everyone in the post office is looking at me.” And I was JUST trying to print a postage label as quickly as humanly possible (while turning beat red with embarrassment). Needless to say, we did NOT go to the library….
Lesson learned, next time I WILL print postage online.
P.S. I promise the kids do NOT normally act like this and they DO listen to me (sometimes). I think it was just one of those days…
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