How To Earn Girl Scout Brownie Painter Badge Project Activities & Wayne Thiebaud Craft Ideas

At our studio in Aldie, Virginia we recently held a Painting and Baking Camp for an awesome group of Girl Scout Brownies!

We wanted to share some ideas and projects for helping you earn your Painter Brownie badge. The girls LOVED the baking twist we put on this badge. We did this in one day camp so you may want to do so in a few meetings if you don’t have time for an all day activity. Obviously you can skip the baking of the cake but if you have time it adds some more fun for the girls!

#1 GET INSPIRED:

For this requirement you need to show the girls different types of paintings. They may have seen some at school but its nice to have some examples to show them. You can even print some pictures online and glue them to cardstock for the girls to pass around. We also taught the girls about cake painter Wayne Thiebaud. If you have not seen his work before he is a famous pop artist from who paints beautiful cake paintings, gumball machines, sweets and treats and also some landscapes. They always LOVE his artwork. We have a big book of his work and they enjoy flipping through. You can go online and print some pictures ahead of time.

#2 PAINT THE REAL WORLD:

You have several options here! You can go outside and have the girls paint some nature scenes. Or if you are not near an area like that you can paint a still life inside. Explain to the girls what a still life is or ask they if they know what that means. After we baked our layer cake we had the girls paint their cake (still life)! Most of the girls painted Wayne Thiebaud inspired still life but they each had their own twist. We really like these white Styrofoam trays (in the photo) for putting the paint in. You can toss them after and the paint doesn’t mix. You can get them in a pack from Dollar Tree.

#3 PAINT A MOOD:

For this fun activity you may want to print a mood/color chart ahead of time and have a few of them to put out at the tables for the girls. Ask them if they know any colors that represent moods. For example yellow means happy. Blue means sad or calm, red means angry etc. You can put a nice twist on this and do Emoji paintings because they all express different emotions….plus you know they LOVE anything Emoji!

#4 PAINT WITHOUT BRUSHES:

For this one you can use sponges, fingers, hands, vegetables to create stamps (cut the end of a celery stalk or other veggies) etc. We bought a bunch of assorted sizes and types of sponges from Dollar Tree. Then cut them up into different shapes. The girls used those as well as fingers to create awesome artwork.

#5 PAINT ON CANVAS/MODERN ART PAINTING:

We used black foam core board, paint and painters tape to create this neat pieces `of modern art! KEEP IN MIND you need to help the girls peel the painters tape off SLOWLY so it does not rip the foam core board. You can also use canvas (more expensive but sold at craft store sometimes small multi packs) and then you don’t have to worry about it having to be peeled off slowly. But we liked the effect of the black background and it worked fine if done slowly. First have the girls tape a neat geometric design on their board. Then paint different colors into each shape. Then once dry peel off the tape.