Puzzle Piece Frame and Watercolor Art {Mother’s Day Gift}

I’m so excited  to share this cute Mother’s Day gift idea (which is actually a modified version of Christmas ornaments we used to make in Kindergarten.) It’s made from popsicle sticks, old puzzle pieces, and paint. You can frame artwork with it (as we did) or frame a photo of your child!

First we made the frames. I used a hot glue gun to glue together four wide popsicle sticks into a square shape. (You could also do this with regular sized popsicle sticks, even doubling them up if you wanted a wide surface for the kids to work with.) 

Once the glue had dried, the kids used liquid glue to attach old puzzle pieces around the frame. (It’s fun watching how differently kids do this. Some just want one single layer of puzzle pieces, others will keep going around and around stacking them in many layers.)

After the glue had dried, I spray painted the puzzle piece frames with a few layers of white spray paint. This provided a nice base color to paint over, or you can even just leave them white.

Next it was time to make the artwork to go inside the frame. I was inspired by this post with watercolor flowers, but simplified it quite a bit for the 3 and 4 year-old age range.

Each child got a square piece of watercolor paper (cut to fit the size of our puzzle frames.) The kids painted the watercolor paper with plain water and then added drops of watercolor paint. They loved watching the colors spread and mix around the paper!

On another sheet of blank paper, the kids drew pictures of themselves with their moms using a black felt pen. We cut them out, and once the watercolor paper was dry, glued the ink drawings on top.

Next, we glued the completed artwork to the back of the frame and  then hot glued a ribbon onto the back to allow the frame to be hung.  

Finally we covered the back with a piece of construction paper to clean up the messy back. 

 That’s it! Such a fun project to do, and the kids are always so proud of their work. After we were done, Lucy immediately went to hang her yellow framed bird picture up in her room. Watching my little girl head off to display her work with such a big smile is a great early Mother’s Day gift!