Imagine you're a preschooler...
Now imagine a castle or palace, with a long rogues gallery, filled with the family lineage portraited in oil paintings for posterity, all surrounded in gorgeoulsy gilded and ornately carved picture frames...
Now imagine a doily with a hand drawn picture of yourself, (the preschooler), drawn as a regal queen, pretty princess, proud prince charming, or courteous king. {Be sure to use inky texta-markers for this craft as crayons and pencils are hard to see from a distance.}
Now mount your ornate portrait doily beside several more portraits of the extended (real or imaginary royal) family on other doilies if you will, and you will have created your own palace picture gallery.
You of course won't be constrained by the square-fetish that I have, so you'll be able to mount your portraits in a long row instead of in a square, and of course, you can get even more invetive if time permits;
- use different sized doilies,
- put photocopies of real photos on your doilies,
- mount the doily pictures on coloured card cut into round circles,
- add ribbon ties to the top, or
- gild the edges of the doilies and so on.
Or not. At my house, the daily rituals of explaining why you should eat your crusts, cleaning spills, peeling apples, finding socks and brushing hair seems to absorb too much of my time for elaborate crafting details...
Speaking of hair - in case you're wondering - the top left portrait is of Rapunzle. Her love interest and his horse are standing beside her off to one side; you can click the image to enlarge it if you're curious to see how well she captured their likeness. Thanks again to Disney for the latest addictive obssession which seems to be complicating my life. As for the other portraits in our gallery, I'm not totally sure who's who, but Little Lotti's one in the top right hand corner does remind me of someone I'm related to, but I'd get in trouble if I said who!
PS - if your children like the idea of adding faces to things - make sure they try out my Mini Mona Lisa art project - and don't forget to join the Summer Giveaway fun, the competition closes on July the 4th.