Nothing in life is "mess free"....

My child loves a good art project.

She comes by that honestly – after all, I do too.  I am sure that I have mentioned this before, but as a little girl myself, my dad and I had the following conversation almost daily:

Me: (sitting in a heap of glue and markers and scissors and scraps of paper) Hi Dad.

Dad: (coming in from outside) Hi. What are you making – besides a mess?

We love a good mess project around here – it is in our blood.

I don’t really mind Hoots making a mess sometimes.  In fact, I think that making a mess is an important thing to let kids do. I like finger painting and play dough as much as the next mom, probably more.  But sometimes, I am looking for something, shall we say, lower maintenance.   Sometimes, chasing a marker wielding toddler around the house (my girl LOVES markers), shouting, “ONLY ON THE PAPER!” isn’t sounding that appealing to me.

So I thought I would try this out:

How could i resist those big, gorgeous words "MESS FREE" shouting out at me, reaching the very soul of any mother who has scrubbed paint from everywhere you can imagine?  Not me, that is for sure.  So we rushed home to give it a try.

Aaaaaannnnnddd..........  well, I have mixed feelings about it. 

A good thing: It is clear, and really only shows up on the special paper, so there is no paint on the furniture, walls, or dogs.

A bad thing: It is clear, so it was almost like she had a hard time telling it was on her finger and that she should wipe it on the paper now.  She would just get a glop on her finger and  get mad that I wouldn’t let her stick her finger back in there for more.  Then, because it is a weird jelly-like consistency, it was so sticky and weird as it dried on her hands - so, I feel like while there was no color on my stuff, the mess-free mess was still there.  Also, it was $8, which seems like a lot of dough to shell out for so little paint.  Okay, that was more than one bad thing.  LOL

We did end up with a masterpiece:

(Sorry for the crappy photo.  Garrett ran off with my camera this morning and I took this with my phone.  Yuck.)

I will say that we are going back for some Color Wonder Markers for my budding artist to try out.  I think that the markers might be a better fit for Little Miss Independent (she hates me giving any kind of help or suggestions during  her creative time!) and that way I can stop screaming, “ONLY ON THE PAPER!” for a little while.