Cute Pumpkin Book and Tea Painting Activity!

I bought the sweetest little book the other day to go along with our pumpkin theme!  The title of it is, The Very Best Pumpkin, and you can find my story synopsis near the bottom of the post.  If you have never seen it or read it, I think it is definitely worth finding, borrowing, or buying a copy (there is also a link below if you are interested in reading more reviews about it).

The tea-stained, rich illustrations especially caught my eye, and I decided we would attempt our own at some point during the week.  :)  And that is exactly what we did!  Both my daughter and I chose our favorite illustrations in the book and attempted to make a copy of them (mine is the pumpkin one).

I took step-by-step pictures of mine so I could post them here for those interested in making one of these kinds of paintings as well.  :)  See below...  

First we used tea (just make a cup and then use it to paint instead of drink) to paint over the entire picture.  I sprinkled some regular coffee grounds on top of the wet paper but found later on that instant grounds work SOOO much better for getting those smaller dark splotches of stain (so we added the instant grounds after we tried the regular grounds).

After the tea stains had dried, we watercolored our sky and ground.  When that dried, we drew our pictures and then traced over them heavily with crayon (this creates kind of a wall effect which helps keep the paint from spreading to other areas if you are using watercolors).  If you have younger children, you may need to help them (as I did with mine) with this part to make sure the crayon is heavy enough, AND to just give those little brains and fingers a rest.

Then we painted our pictures with watercolors!  I LOVE how they turned out - especially my daughter's painting!  BTW - she needed some white for the snow so I used some acrylic paint and just watered it down a little because her small tray of paints did not contain white.  This worked really well for us!

Hope you enjoy the pictures and feel inspired!  :)

Story Synopsis:

Peter is a young boy who lives with and helps his grandparents at Pumpkin Hollow Farm. One day, as he is tending the pumpkins, he finds and follows a vine which leads him to a pumpkin all by itself in a field. He faithfully tends to it and is so busy that he apparently does not notice when new neighbors move in. Their daughter Meg, loves to read and quietly watches Peter from her yard as he cares for his pumpkin.

When the pumpkins on the farm are ready for picking, Peter helps various people find the perfect pumpkin for their needs. One day, Meg and her family show up. Meg searches the pumpkin patch but cannot seem to find the right one until Peter leads her to his lonely (but now beautiful) pumpkin and offers it to her, confessing he knew she was watching him all along. Meg and Peter become friends, and the next summer finds them tending pumpkins together! :)

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