Collaborative Art: Watercolor Resist Collage

Here's a project that my four-year-old and two-year-old both participated in, and I think would have worked well if we had a wider age range too.

Each girl was given a small square of watercolor paper.  I handed strips of masking tape to my two-year-old to stick on to her paper however she liked.  My four-year-old was able to rip off her own tape.

Next, we painted the squares with watercolors.  I recommended to them that we only use bright, happy colors for this project.

After the paint had dried, I tore off the pieces of tape.  (You can see that I got impatient with the drying paint, and ripped the tape off a little too early- that made it fray a bit)

I arranged the painted squares close together, grid-style on a piece of cardboard. Each girl did as many squares as she liked.

In between the pictures, I put black electrical tape, and to finish it off, I trimmed the cardboard with scissors so that none of it showed.

I really liked this project because:

1)  It was an art project (as opposed to a craft where there was a set result).  The girls had some room to express their creativity.

2) The final result was something beautiful I could hang on my wall.

The only trouble is that the electrical tape keeps peeling off from the cardboard.  Does anyone have an idea of how I could remedy that?