Sticker Resist with Watercolors

Do you have a set of watercolors? If not, this fun project will give you reason to pick one up.

My kids and I have been keeping sketchbooks for a few months, and we enjoy the challenge of testing out new techniques, materials, and ideas as we move through our books. Painting over stickers (and then peeling them back) presents children with the opportunity to learn about masking off areas of their work, negative space, and paint-resist.

This project is ideal for preschoolers and above.

Materials

• Watercolor paints
• Paintbrush/es
• Paper Towels or rags for blotting paint.
• Sketchbook or Heavy Paper that can support a fair amount of water. Watercolor Paper is ideal.
• Office Stickers: Round, rectangular. Paper tape or kid stickers work well too.

I started with a few sheets of dot stickers from the office supply aisle at the drug store, and then made a random pattern all over my sketchbook.

Then I painted a wash of rainbow colors over the stickers.

Nutmeg thought this looked pretty cool, and jumped in with her own version: rectangle stickers and free-form painted shapes. I always encourage children to follow their own ideas when making art.

She peeled the rectangle stickers off the page to see how the technique worked, and then added a sea of circle stickers to the page.

She asked if she could peel all of my stickers off — quite easily her favorite part of the whole project.

When the paint dried, she peeled all the stickers off her page to reveal the white space below. So fun!

Printable Project Recipe

What do you think? Have you tried other techniques for masking off paper?