Ballons + paint + darts = good messy fun!

Remember that scene in the move "The Princess Diaries," where Ann What's-Her-Face throws darts at balloons filled with paint to create art?  Yeah, me neither.  But some of my young women did, and they dreamed of doing it in real life.  So my adviser Melanie and I did some internet researching and figured out how to do it as a mutual activity for them back in May.  We used a piece of drywall (free from the basement) as our canvas, and then with Kip's help I chopped it into roughly 10x10 pieces for them all to have.

After watching me stand at the sink for a couple of hours, getting watery paint EVERYWHERE trying to fill those balloons, the kids were dying to try it for themselves.  So this past week we bought some inexpensive canvases at Hobby Lobby, spent another few hours filling balloons (and getting paint everywhere again), and managed to find a morning where it wasn't raining that we could go outside and have our paint-balloon-dart adventure.

Believe it or not, all of the balloons are orange and green water balloons; they just take on the color of the paint, which makes it super easy to pick out which ones you want on your canvas.  We just stuck them to the canvas with little sewing pins through the bottom (below the knot.)

Let the games begin!  Caleb was most excited about the dart-throwing part. Luckily no one got stuck by a pointy dart; McKinley did get a ricochet dart to the foot, but not the pointy end. :)

 

 Fixing/adding balloons

 

 Done!  Lovely artwork!  I was impressed by how cool it looks, the kids did great.

 A close up of the paint splatter aftermath. :)

It was an awesome summer art project and now the canvases are all proudly displayed on their bedroom walls.  WIN!