Saturday night I came home later than I had planned from a homeschool conference, completed the chores I needed to and than sat down tired. My mind was racing and I felt unsettled. Watching TV with the boys as they played their computer game was relaxing me so I thought I would pull out my Paint by Sticker book and do a page. I don’t think I’ve shared this book with you before so let me walk you through it. Do stay tuned to my ArtWork Notebooking Page at the close of this post.
The page I did took me about 30-45 to complete and I have to admit I was TIRED, I wasn’t focused on perfection, I was focused on getting my mind to settle so that I’d be able to get to bed and sleep. 🙂 So the page I did isn’t perfect, but it completed that task I had…the fiddling with stickers, looking for numbers, settled my brain down wonderfully. I think it’s one of the reasons I like colouring, it gives my brain something fiddly to work with that helps it to shut off all the extraneous, and at the end of it I can see I’ve accomplished something. This Paint by Stickers book does the same thing, but leaves me not having to worry about getting colours right.
Paint by Sticker gives me 12 different pieces of artwork to complete. What the artwork is, is listed in the table of contents. This book contains such as the Creation of Adam, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Dance as well as others. The one I am showing you today is called “House of Parliament, Sunlight Effect” by Claude Monet.
I admittedly didn’t take a picture of the uncompleted work, so I’m showing you a different page. 🙂 You’ll bear with me right? The spaces have an alpha-numeric combination.
The instructions in the beginning of the book tell you to be careful about putting the stickers on, and advise using a tweezer. I learned that if you don’t stick the pieces on firmly you can do some replacing, but once it is stuck, it’s stuck. AND if you apply too much pressure it’s too bad, so sad. Ergo, if you want it to come out just so… take your time, have good lighting, be finicky about your placement.
It’s easy to know which page of stickers you need to use. Each sticker page has a picture of the completed art work in the top right corner.
AND each sticker page is perforated so they rip out easily making it super easy to complete each page. And they do… sometimes perforated pages don’t rip out smoothly or easily, these do. So much better than flipping back and forth in a book trying to reach small stickers.
You may have noticed on the page above the stickers are divided into colour coded sections. This makes it easier to find the sticker that you need to use. I found the colour coded divisions added a bright spot, so helpful and so much nicer than a plain white background eh! 🙂
My thought when I started out was that I would start on one side and work my way across but as I worked I changed my mind. I then started picking out the biggest pieces and fitting them in, I saved the smallest pieces for the end. You can make your creation in whatever way you want to!
MOST of the stickers I managed to get well. I was able to reposition three or four of them, one I bungled badly. But my son said “It looks good mom!”
You can probably see the darker purple one in the middle that I messed up with. I’m thinking if I wanted to I could take a purple pencil crayon and fill in those white lines, but from a distance the lad tells me it looks great and I should just leave things be. 🙂
I did learn that the stickers are definitely not oriented to the page. I frequently had to turn the sticker around to find the right orientation. Make sure that you don’t just slap the stickers down. Take your time and turn them around so you get the sticker on the correct way.
All in all this was an excellent way to relax without having to fuss about with crayons, paper or markers. No big colour decisions to make, just a look, sort, place and be finished with a decent looking piece of art. I urge you, if you like colouring books, to give the paint by sticker books a look. I know I’ll be looking for more of them (hopefully on sale like this one was). 🙂
Just so you know, some of the art work is more involved and requires two pages of stickers to complete. All carefully labelled so you know what goes where. Go on… create a masterpiece… One sticker at a time. 🙂
I was thinking about how this book would be so handy to do with a homeschooling unit. Can’t you just see working with your students/children as you talk about this work that the artist did, and then take small breaks to see other works by the same artist. You could easily pull in history, geography, science and more. Reading to your children fascinating tidbits as they keep their hands and eyes busy recreating works of art!
Click on the image below to download my ArtWork Notebooking Page.
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