Guess what?! You were right!

I fell in love with some Marimekko designs (ok, who hasn’t?!), and thought the same thing. So I put it to the test. I printed out some simple modern art designs off of the web, gave the kids very general instructions, and let them at it. Behold, my little artists in waiting:

DIY Marimekko Plates So Easy a Kid Could Do It.

Related Pages: Christmas Family Keepsake Plate, Advent Calendar Crafts

So yeah, they are gorgeous – but that’s only half of the awesomeness of this project:

• I made them with $1 Dollar Store plates
• I had paint markers on hand – so the project cost a whopping $3
• These would make The. Most. Awesome. Holiday. Gifts. No more lame presents that you display for the sake of your kids artist’s ego! These turned out SO well you will actually want to display them – I am!!

And for the record, here’s some of our original design inspiration:

Marimekko Line Art Inspiration

Marimekko Plates Display

Marimekko Flower Fabric

What You Need to Make Kids Modern Art Plates

Kids Modern Art Plates Closeup and Materials

Plates

Paint markers or porcelain paint

Pebeo Porcelain Paints (Dick Blick affiliate link) WERE the only paints I’ve found that are permanent on glass/ceramic and food safe. But their product description changed and now says they aren’t food safe (yet they say they are non-toxic – so WTH?!) If you just want them for display, use Folk Art Enamel Paints (Joann.com affiliate link), though I wonder if you could also just use permanent markers? I’ll have to try it and see! I’ve used both kinds of paints, and I do recommend treating the plates/glass with kid gloves once complete. They say they are ‘permanent’, but do scratch somewhat easily with wear (especially with silverware use!).

Modern Art With a 10 Year Old Flourish

Finding inspiration is easy – I poked around on Google Images looking for Marimekko stuff, but I also recommend looking for vintage mid-century modern dishes by Arabia, Figgjo or the Fajance line by Royal Copenhagen (my vintage collecting habit is showing!). Ebay is another great place to find these products with artwork that kids can easily reproduce. And for really young children, you could draw the outline yourself and let them color in the shapes. With this kind of art, they don’t really need to stay within the lines. ;)

I absolutely love this craft I did last weekend with the family. Technically you could also use it for a Hanukkah craft, too. It was super simple and easy to paint, and took very little time as well. This is the kind of thing that I am going to bring out every year with a warm smile on my face, remembering when our thumbprints were these sizes:

Family Keepsake Plate Craft

What You Need to Make This Christmas Family Plate

Like these Thanksgiving painted plates, all you need are Folk Art Enamel paints in blue, white, orange and extra dark purple (or black), a plain white plate from your local dollar store, and paint brushes. Oh, and thumbs. Make sure you get the Enamel paints, they get baked onto the plate.

How to Paint the Penguin Family Christmas Plate

First, mix the light blue paint together with a tiny bit of blue paint in some white paint. I left them slightly unmixed for the streaked effect in the background. Paint the area shown in the example plate above in light blue. Since it would be hard to get a clean edge by hand, I just left the brush strokes on the outside to transition the painting to the plate.

Next, paint the bottom ‘snow hill’ with straight white paint in a wavy line, then feather the edges like you did for the blue paint.

Next get the family lined up and start painting thumbs! I went from largest to smallest (Dad, Mom, Big Sis, Brother, Little Sis). You do need a generous amount of paint for the thumbprints, but don’t let it glob up on the plate, otherwise it will crack while baking.

Penguin Family Plate Detail

Next, with a small detail paint brush and the dark purple (or black) paint, put two wings, a ‘V’ shaped hairline, and eyes on each penguin. Then dot two feet in place and a tiny triangle for the beak.

I thought the plate looked a little plain at this point, so I dabbed snowflakes randomly all over the background with the white paint. Then I put a ring of dark purple polka dots around the rim and added “2009″ at the bottom. I could have also labeled each penguin with a name, but liked it enough just as is.

Let it dry for about an hour, then bake according to the Enamel paint directions.

You can’t eat off of this plate, but if you cover it with a cute napkin, I’m sure that Santa would LOVE to eat cookies off of it every year! Mine is probably going into a plate holder and onto my mantel.

Be sure to also check out our Christmas recipes, more Christmas crafts, or our huge amount of Christmas coloring pages!

Last weekend we finished up our keepsake Thanksgiving plates. I’ll be using these every year until I’m old and gray, I tell you!

Thanksgiving Keepsake Plate Craft

These turkey handprints are surprisingly easy to make, you just need a few special materials found at any craft store:

What You Need to Make Thanksgiving Handprint Keepsake Plates

Thanksgiving Keepsake Handprints - Craft Materials

Plain white plates – I got mine at my local dollar store – cheap, cheap, cheap!

Folk Art Enamel paints – these are baked onto the plate surface after the painting is done, so be sure to get the Enamels. They don’t come in a huge number of colors, so you will be mixing colors from red, green, yellow and brown paints. I also used black paint for the eyes, but you can use one of your existing colors for that tiny dot, too.

Paint brushes

Keepsake Thanksgiving Plate

Wash and dry the plates, and get a paper plate ready to use for mixing your paint colors. There’s no exact science to it, I just created different shades of red and orange out of the brown, red and yellow paints. When trying to mix lighter colors, use only a very little bit of the darker color and mix more if necessary. These pigments are pretty saturated and light colors are easily overpowered.

For the above design, I used:

Straight brown for the palm and thumb

Straight red for one finger

Light orange (yellow plus a little red) for another finger

Dark red (red and brown) for another finger

Darker red (red brown and a drop or two of green) for the last finger

You can mix it up and also use straight green like my son did for one of his fingers.

Plate Painting Instructions

If they mess up, don’t worry, just wash the paint off while it is still wet and start over!

Working fairly quickly (because the paint can dry out fast), paint the colors onto your child’s hand. Be generous with the paint, but you don’t want globs of it coming off onto the surface. Help your child hold their fingers apart and center it over the plate, then guide it down in position and have them press their handprint for a few seconds. After they lift their hands, they may need to press again to ensure the full handprint makes it onto the plate. Because the finger impressions didn’t end up touching the palm impression, I went back in with some brown paint and filled in the parts of their hands that didn’t come in contact with the plate.

If you end up with thick globs of paint, take off the excess with a paint brush, because baking globs of the enamel paint doesn’t turn out well at all.

After your kids have washed their hands, have them come back with a small paint brush and add the eye, beak and red turkey waddle underneath the chin.

For the outside rim decorations, I gave each of them only a little guidance. I was really pleased to see all of them come up with interesting designs that complimented each other yet were very much a reflection of their personalities.

After they were all done, I took a tiny bit of black paint and added “2009″ to the bottom corner of their handprints. Then I painted their initials onto each plate .

Bake according to the directions on the Enamel paints.

While these plates can’t be used for eating, they can dress up your walls, decorate your Thanksgiving table, be excellent hostess gifts for Grandma, or be used as charger plates for smaller see through plates!

Here are more Thanksgiving handprint crafts, printable Thanksgiving placecards, and an adorable set of Thanksgiving finger puppets to make!