Years ago, my mother-in-law, who is a tremendous gift finder, gave my kids two boxes of dot paint. Have you had the chance to experience the joy of dot paint? We usually get ours from Lakeshore Learning because they carry it in-store, but Amazon will ship it to you, also. It’s washable paint in a tube with a little round sponge on one end. It’s perfect for making big, colorful pictures really fast. And mostly, the kids don’t manage to get it anywhere but the paper. The only downside is that curious little fingers like to pick at the sponge, which ruins the paint tube before it’s empty.
When our All Souls/All Saints Day Party came around again two years back, I was scrounging around for supplies and ideas in my house when I ran across our dot paint. Since we’re in San Antonio – and because Coco was so very popular – I thought a quick and easy addition to our party plans could be a big poster-size sugar skull. Sugar skulls, and the face paint to match, are part of a Mexican tradition that aims to make the ugliness of death – skulls – into something beautiful – gorgeously decorated skulls. Seems a little Catholic to me, since we’re meant to embrace the beauty of dying and rising to new life in Christ.
I unrolled my trusty big, white roll of kids’ craft paper (Hobby Lobby, kids’ art aisle), cut two big pieces, and free handed a skull with a pencil. I outlined decorations all over it, big enough for the dot painters to fit in, then retraced my lines with a Sharpie. I actually recommend using freezer paper instead of the big roll. You can get it in the foil and baggie aisle usually. It has a waterproof backing that doesn’t let paint soak through, but regular paper on the other side.
If drawing a thing scares you, you can try doing it by grid or cutting out the shapes and tracing them. There’s also the projector method like for those lovely animal silhouettes from the VBS safari theme year. For inspiration, and another coloring option for the kids, you can grab the free skull coloring page from Crayola.com. We printed them half-size and used them for decorating our treat bags.
