Making a picture puzzle as a gift

Cakey wanted to make a puzzle for her Grandma J's birthday. We decided the best way to do this was to paint a picture and then cut it up. I was not in the mood for dealing with the mess of acrylic paints so I got out our little watercolour paints instead.

I found a beautiful piece of A4 watercolour paper that I taped to the table. I wanted to avoid too much paper warping as Cakey uses a large amount of water. For some reason I forgot to put a messy mat underneath before I taped it... sigh! I also gave Cakey some watercolour crayons to try out (which failed to impress her), a paintbrush and a tub of water.

Cakey painted a lovely picture and particularly enjoyed tapping the brush to make 'little coloured raindrops'. This went so well she wanted to make another – this time I taped down a thick piece of pink construction paper which worked just as well.

Once Cakey's paintings were dry I unpeeled the tape and photographed them. Then we cut them up. I cut one painting up into nice regular squares. Cakey cut the other into irregular wonky shapes. I had to put a halt to her cutting as the pieces were getting smaller and smaller and any chance that Grandma J was going to be able to put it back together were getting slimmer and slimmer.

I did a test – I put them back together when Cakey was asleep. Her irregular shaped one was far easier than my regular one. Ha – the 3 year old does know best!

We packed the picture puzzles into a pink box and I stuck the photos of the complete pictures on top.... and then we posted it to Grandma J.

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