What To Do With All Of Those Watercolor Paintings!

If you are anything like us, you have piles of watercolor paintings and other beautiful artwork from your children somewhere in the house.  It is hard to throw away art, so we let it pile up in boxes, cupboards and filing cabinets.  We use them as backgrounds in our bookshelves and hang them on the walls. 

This year, we decided to use our watercolor paintings for other projects.  Here are some of the projects that we have done.


Gift tags and cards for birthdays, thank you and holidays

Star lanterns

Vases for holding pencils, knitting needles, egg tree branches and more (glue onto a oatmeal can)

Cards with embroidery

Backgrounds/matting for picture frames

Rune Cards

We would love to hear your ideas!

Watercolor Mother's Day Cards

Here's an easy way to make beautiful Mother's Day cards for Mom, Grandma and Great-Grandma out of old, watercolor art work:

1. Locate your children's old watercolor paintings or practice sheets. Or, create a new water color painting on an 11 x 17 piece of watercolor paper. Make it simple, like 2-3 bands of color.

2. Fold the art work in half, then half again.


3. Glue or glue stick to keep the insides together.

4. Trim, if needed.

5. With a pen, have the kids write a poem, draw a simple picture and sign their names!

Felting at Syrendell

We love to felt! All of us do some sort of wet or needlefelting. We use the clover 5-needle tool and we also use single needlefelting needles.

Our wax crayons have been in a basket for months, but they tend to get dinged up. Joey wet felted a nice lining for the basket out of some beautiful merino wool strips.

Lately, we've been needlefelting outfits for finger puppets. Joey has created an adorable series of finger puppets called the "Seasonal Children", featuring Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. She needlefelted some beautiful Math Gnomes with Mommy for little brother Wilson for Christmas. The gnomes sleep at night in a box with felted lining!

During Christmas, we worked on needle felting balls and turning them into ornaments!

For Valentine's day, Joey felted some small hearts out of some pink wool and sparkle angelina fibers that she carded. She added a pin to the back of each heart and then felted a piece over the pin backing to hold. These will be precious gifts for her cousins and friends from her dance classes!

We created an Acorn Family for our Seasonal Spot (aka, "nature table") by wet felting and then needlefelting clothes for the wooden finger puppets. Each family member received an acorn cup hat!

Our sweet Gnomy has boots, beard and hat, felted by Ricky and Mommy. He is often seen in our Seasonal Spot, or near a seasonal wreath.

Everyone enjoys needlefelting fruits and veggies for our little grocery store. After playing "store", we often take the bounty to the wood stove that Daddy built for Wilson for Christmas and prepare meals.

Wilson loves playing with his rainbow wood home blocks. The Acorn Family fits nicely in the house! Wilson helped Mommy felt a bowl and some tiny fruit for the table this week.

Since we love to spin and don't like to waste, all fiber scraps go into baskets. When it's time to felt, the baskets are a treasure trove of colors and textures, just waiting to become something amazing!