Decorative Picture Frame and Painting Wooden Objects

On a recent trip to the craft store, I bought a bunch of wooden frames and other wooden objects for $1 each, and the girls (33 months) have been having such a wonderful time painting and embellishing them over the past couple weeks.  I wanted to share the process for making this lovely sparkly picture frame because it was so much fun, and actually ended up looking pretty neat (the photo doesn't do it justice)...

 I asked L and E to cover the plain picture frame with little star stickers:

Then they painted over the entire frame with blue-green paint:

Which soon turned into body-paint:

The weather was warm, so I let them take 'baths' on the deck in their water table - it was so cute, plus it's always a good time when Mommy lets them break the rules.

After the paint on the frame dried, I peeled the star stickers off (it was way too hard for the girls to do - when we've done this type of project in the past I used stickers from the Priddy sticker activity books which are not very sticky, and they were a lot easier to remove).  The girls added a coat of glitter glue (a favorite activity around here).  The glitter glue was great for disguising the imperfections that were left behind by my attempts to peel the stickers, and here's the finished product:

 This would make a great gift, too.  Here are some of the other paint-on-wood projects my girls have been up to:

The best part about this project is that the cat and dog became their 'babies' and the girls have been spending lots of time playing with their creations.  They also made these butterfly and dragonfly pets for themselves:

 The birdhouses they painted have been getting lots of play time as well using plastic bird figures:

Overall, for $1 each, these wooden pieces have definitely been a good value for both art and play time.  It's really nice to be able to pull out the paint and some new wooden objects to paint and watch the kids' eyes light up.