Crafty ideas to beat the blues

Dealing with the COVID lockdown has become a huge challenge for people from all walks of life, especially our friends in the intellectual/developmental disabilities community. One way we can all cope with the blues is by expressing ourselves through art.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton

You don’t have to be a Picasso to create a masterpiece – art is for everyone! We have discovered a few crafty ideas we'd like to share with you - appropriate for all ages and skill levels:

“Feelings” Collages

This project can be done through a variety of formats:

- Cardboard Feeling Collage – Express your emotions by cutting out photos and/or words from old magazines and pasting them to the board. All you need are the magazines, cardboard (or paper) and a glue stick.

- “My Happy Place” Collage – You can take your own personal photos (or use existing ones) and create a collage of things that make you happy, like pictures of butterflies or flowers from your back yard – or by using photos of families and friends.

There are so many things you can do with collages - as an added bonus you can make them from items you already have in your house including crayons, stickers, glitter, colored pencils and paper.

If you’re interested in more mixed media collages, visit MollyMoo for ideas and tutorials.

Thumb animals

Everyone can make thumb animals! All you need to do is press your thumb on any kind of paper and trace it with your choice of crayon, pencil, marker – then you just draw eyes, ears, a tail or whatever you want to create your own animal. You can also use a stamp pad to make your thumb print. You can create an entire zoo of thumb animals!

Rainbow fish

Create a beautiful and unique rainbow fish with paper plates. You may color them with just about anything from crayons, magic markers or paint, add some fins with cardstock paper (or by cutting out pieces of another paper plate) – add glitter or whatever you else you want (even a googly eye you can get at a thrift store). For more rainbow fish inspiration, visit Natural Beach Living.

If you have any fun and easy craft ideas you’d like to share, please let us know.

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