A Fun Craft For Tu B’shevat: Paint Blooming Trees With Q-Tips
The Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat, which is the new year for the trees, is on Sunday night, so now is the time to whip up some crafts to celebrate! Ah yes, and in case you are not familiar with this lovely holiday, which marks the cycle for fruit bearing trees, then you might be interested to know that it includes a Seder, which like Passover, includes four cups of wine! Of course one does not have to drink four cups of wine (while one does for Passover) as that might be a bit much, but rather the seder includes red and white wine and mixtures of the two. Okay, enough about that, before we get into the holiday where we love to eat as many types of fruit as possible, lets paint some pretty pictures! The almond trees here in Israel are the first fruit bearing trees to bloom, and generally bloom right around Tu B’Shevat, but since this year is a leap year and we are adding a whole extra month into our calendar, I’m guessing the trees won’t be blooming just yet. Plus we’ve had a really wet and sometimes cold winter, which I believe keeps the trees dormant a bit longer, that means that this year we need to paint some lovely almond trees,and it is so fun you’ll want to fill the walls, Let’s get painting, with Q-tips……..
You’ll Need:
- Q-tips
- tape
- acrylic craft paint, red, white, pink, green, black (optional)
- paper
- a black marker
How To:
- You can add the trunks either before or after, and apply either with paint (top photo) or draw with a marker, photo above. I think I prefer the effect of adding the trunks and branches at the end, but you can certainly draw just the trunk, and then add the branches…..whatever works for you!
- Tape about 7 or 8 Q-tips together such that all the heads are roughly on the same level.
- Dip the Q-tips bunch into paint and then apply paint to paper by dabbing with the Q-tip bunch, which produces lots of small circles.
- Start with a darker color and then apply a few layers sparsely of a lighter color and then white.
- At the end you can dab a bit of green, though that is optional.
- Now, to make your whole painting look really great, add the trunk and draw or paint branches peeking through the dots where ever it makes sense.
Enjoy and wishing you a Tu B’Shevat Sameach!
