Peaceful Activity: Symmetrical Folk Art 🎨

it's not that hard and it doesn't have to be great 😉

Hello! Here’s an activity idea for your weekend that you and your kids can do together. The freeing thing about trying to make art even if you’re not particularly skilled at it—I’m not, as you’ll see!—is that it doesn’t have to be good. You don’t even have to come up with your own ideas. You can begin practicing by imitating someone else’s designs as you develop your own style; you’re not trying to sell it. There are no performance expectations. But you might be surprised by how well it turns out anyway, because symmetry is cool like that.

Here’s the gist:

1. Look up folk art of your choice. (The styles we practiced the most were Scandinavian and Hungarian.) I compiled some images from Canva here for you; feel free to print this out to gain some inspiration.

   

2. Fold a piece of paper in half or lightly draw a line down the middle. Then draw whatever designs you feel like. I recommend having some kind of border or frame to hold everything in. Find little things to doodle into the blank spaces.
   We’re not aiming for botanical accuracy; you can even just do lines or circles or swirls. The key to cool-looking folk art is symmetry. It’s magical. See next step.

Gaining inspiration from Creative Folk Art and Beyond by Flora Waycott

3. Create a mirror image of what you made on the other side. It’s okay if your doodles weren’t spectacular; they’ll look cool anyway because…yep, you guessed it. Symmetry. ✨

4. You probably want to use pencil when you’re starting out, but folk art looks super cool if painted with watercolors or gouache. Bonus tip for aesthetic: limit the color palette. Before you start painting, figure out 3-5 colors that look good together. A lot of Hungarian folk art is all red!

5. If you’re proud of what you made, consider giving your favorites away! Bookmarks make awesome little gifts. My girls had a lot of fun with this.

I was pleasantly surprised by how fun and relaxing it was to design vase bookmarks! You have to give the layers time to dry, though, so I recommend making bookmarks in batches.

There you have it! I hope you get to try it out. Even if you only have a pencil and paper, you can spend hours and hours doodling away with no expectations. When you take the kids to play outside, bring a clipboard and just mess around. Remember, you might be surprised by a beautiful thing that comes from your very own hands ❤️

Have a great weekend, dear readers. Please send me some pics of the folk art you come up with! (You can reply to any of these emails.) And thank you so much for your kind responses to my most recent post. I appreciate you all.

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts