I cleaned out the laundry cabinet that has been sitting on our back deck for the past two years. It seems I may actually get a laundry in the near future and the cabinet made it’s way back inside, but not before I removed piles of random junk from inside it. Among the junk I found a surprising number of nuts bolts and screws which somehow didn’t make it out to the shed. They sat on my kitchen bench for a few days before I decided to take matters into my own hands… and paint with them!
Printing with Nuts and Bolts and Screws!
You’ll need…
- Paint
- A container to put your paint in and some sponges or material to make ‘stamp pads’
- Paper
- A selection of nuts and bolts
- A smock or apron
- A damp cloth to wipe hands.
Of course that laundry cabinet didn’t have any sponges in it so I cut up some polar fleece and put it in a recycled plastic tray to make our stamp pads and it worked great. I put a good dollop of paint into each section and swished it around till it had soaked in a little and then we were ready to print.
We were quite surprised that the hexagonal nuts didn’t print hexagonal shapes! It wasn’t until we looked closer that we saw there was a clear circular rim sitting higher than the hexagonal shape, which is what printed.
We discovered some of the bolts had numbers and letters on them that printed onto the paper.
Our favourite were the screws with the different patterns on their heads which made really interesting prints.
The bolts and screws were the perfect size for little hands to manipulate and this was a quick and easy art activity that was lots of fun.
We think these prints would make great cards or wrapping paper!
Do you like printing? What other objects have your printed with?
You can find more of our printing activities here.
[…] be fun toys (of course under supervision and of the appropriate size). Picklebums used them for printing and painting and Hands On As We Grow used them as a fine motor […]