Here’s one of those crafts that didn’t exactly turned out as I imagined! My little artist had his own plans, but the whole point was the fun and the crafting moment together, not perfection.

To start, you’ll need a simple frame (you can find these cheap at a craft store, measuring about 5×7 inches). Travis loves the mechanics of removing the back off a frame, so was delighted to discover our project enabled him to do so.

Cut a piece of leftover holiday wrapping paper to fit the glass of the frame, and insert.

I set out acrylic paints and invited Travis to draw any winter-themed scene that would fit nicely with our Christmas tree background. He chose white for snow, and I encouraged him to paint a snowman, thinking of how the body is made up of various circles.

Travis had his own plans, making a big snowy blanket of white. “It’s covering the trees,” he insisted.

Luckily at this point I snapped a pic, because he soon decided he needed to “snow” over the trees completely with white paint. I laughed but didn’t tell him this rather negated the point of having wrapping paper inside the frame.

He then wanted to mix other colors over his white. “I’m an artist!” he declared, doing swirls of paint.

Well, we didn’t end up with a winter scene, but we did end up with a good time!

I encourage you to have fun with these, though. Your children could paint something quite beautiful in front of the wrapping paper background, whether snowmen or ornaments or anything else that fits the season. I’d love to hear what they come up with in the comments!