Child Painted Horse Artwork

When my daughter was 5, we redesigned her room in Oregon. Gone were the baby things – she was a big girl! Part of the process included me trying to figure out how to incorporate some of my daughter’s artistic masterpieces into the space. The problem was that most of her artwork from school was just one random piece after another and I wanted a pair. Plus, I was hoping to get the artwork to be in the right color scheme.

I asked her if she would be on board with making some art! When she found out she’d get to use my paints and brushes, she couldn’t get into her paint clothes fast enough!

I printed out a piece of black and white clipart from the Internet. You can find free images online, but I believe this is one that had to be purchased. (Depending on the image and the colors you intend to use,  you may need to lighten the image some in a graphic or photography program.)

I gave my daughter a pre-selected palette of craft paints to work with and had her paint over the lines on the clipart. The only guidance I gave her was just to “follow the lines.”  She went to town with picking out what color to paint the mane, the nose, etc. It’s basically like the concept of a coloring book, except we were using craft paint.

Since I needed two images, I “reversed or flipped” one of the images when I printed it out. That way, the horses would be looking at each other when I hung them on the wall. When she was done, I cut some off the bottom of the paper to make the image square-shaped.

I had a pair of frames sitting in storage that I had had for EONS. I bought them on big time clearance at a craft store and when I got them home it was because I realized they were a super weird size. That meant buying a mat for the frames would have been more expensive than the frames themselves. That was annoying. So, they sat just waiting for their moment to shine!

I realized I could make these odd-sized frames work for this project. I used silver Christmas wrapping paper as a mat and laid my daughter’s artwork on top. The paper isn’t “perfect” as far as a mat is concerned. You can see in the pictures that it has a weird warped look to it depending on how the light hits it. However, it doesn’t bug me enough to change it. 🙂

Whenever someone comments on the artwork, they are surprised to learn that my daughter, who was five at the time, painted them. She wasn’t painting or drawing perfect horse heads at age 5 (or now), but she was great at following the lines and filling in white space!

The result was practically FREE artwork that was completely personalized to her room. The best part is that she is proud of her artwork and still loves it two years later. That definitely makes me do my happy dance!

Thanks for being here. If you have another minute, I have another post.

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