Wednesday, March 18, 2015

3 Ways to Make Fruit and Vegetable Prints with Kids

Hey!  Are you going to throw away that shriveled carrot?  Got a few limes rolling around in the fridge and not sure what to do with them?  Then today's post is for you!  Today I'm going to share 3 fun ways to make fruit and vegetable print artwork!  And just to give you a heads up... one of the methods combines art AND science together to create prints that .... MAGICALLY APPEAR when you heat them.  Whoa.....

3 Ways to make Fruit and Vegetable Prints!

3 ways to make art with fruit and vegetable prints (including one magical + scientific way!)
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Today several other kid craft-loving bloggers and I are sharing cute and fun crafts involving fruit and vegetable prints.  So scroll down to the bottom of the page for 10 MORE fun and crafty fruit and vegetable print ideas!

Let's get started!




3 Ways to make Fun Fruit and Vegetable Print Art

Method 1:  Just print it!



Here are the items that Chuck and I used to create our prints:

(I put tooth picks through my cabbage because the leaves kept coming apart.  I also cut the carrot stumps into shapes.)



And here's how our table was set up:

(FYI, we just used tempera paint.  To make cleaner prints, you have to dab off excess paint.  Chuck didn't really care about cleaner prints.  He just rolled everything around.)



As our paint dried, we tossed glitter onto it.  (This was fun to do... but warning- a lot of the glitter flaked off once the paint dried. )

Here are some of Chuck's prints:



Here are my prints...



I also gave Chuck some packing tape to help clean up the extra glitter.  He was ENTRANCED and seriously enjoyed just sticking the glitter onto the tape.  (I definitely think he enjoyed this part more than the printing part.)



Method 2:  Turn your prints into a collage!

After everything dried, I cut out some of the cleaner prints and turned them into a lovely and modern collage.  



Method 3:  Make some magically appearing prints!

Yup.  You read that right.  At first you don't see anything on the page... and then slowly, slowly they're appear!  It's magic! (Well, science.)  Although this method didn't result in the most beautiful prints, it was the coolest for me by far.

magically appearing fruit and vegetable prints

The secret ingredient is... lemon juice!  Simply dip your fruit and veggies into lemon juice and start printing away.  Once the juice dries, hold your paper over an open flame (using tongs!) and watch your artwork magically appear.  (This was one of the techniques I used before to write secret messages to Chuck.)  Afterwards, I just used Sharpie markers to doodle on top of the prints.


I hope you have fun trying these ideas out with your kids too!

And as promised, here are 10 more fruit and vegetable print crafts!


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Happy making, friends!