On a hot day, make brown paper bag art! (Recycle those grocery bags!)

You are probably wondering, "why would I want to do that on such a hot day?"  Well, the heat is exactly what one needs to make a really neat, textured, canvas to paint on by simply recycling a brown paper bag. 

First, open the bag and cut a straight line from one corner of the top of the bag all the way to the bottom of the bag.  Then cut out the rectangle bottom and completely cut it off.  You should now have a large rectangular piece minus the bottom of the bag. Even if there is a little "u" notch at the top, that is fine.  Make sense?   Okay, next crumple up the bag into a big ball!  (Perfect to smush out any frustrations!)  Then, completely wet the paper bag with cold water. You can either run it under a faucet or dunk it in a bowl.  It doesn't matter which, because next, you have to squeeze out as much water as you can.  Then carefully open the ball--don't smooth it out, just open it, and lie it out flat to dry outside on a towel or table in the scorching heat.  While it is drying, have a nice, cool, refreshment! (Whatever you fancy, iced beverages, popsicles for the kids...)  Once the paper is dry, which shouldn't take very long if it is 100 degrees out, it will be a really cool canvas to paint or draw on. 

After the canvas dried, we brought the paper into the house to paint in the a/c.  We used some iridescent squeezable paint tubes that already had brushes attached---nice and easy!  (They were some sort of generic, kid-friendly paints that had all sorts of earthy, metallic,tones. )  Everyone in our family had fun painting on the brown paper.  Stay tuned.  I will post a picture of our family art, which turned out so nice, that we had it professionally framed and hung it in our dining room for everyone to enjoy!