A few years ago I made a set of printable art badges that we had so much fun turning into wearable awards for achievement in art. This year, with so many kids learning at home, I revisited the original idea, making a few changes to turn our old set of badges into everything you need to create your own easy, printable mixed media art challenge!
Our updated art challenge printable set includes stickers for nine different art mediums and templates you can fill in with a supply of your choice! All of our art supply challenge stickers are formatted as circles you can easily cut out with a 2.5-inch round punch, OR can print right onto an Avery label sticker sheet – it couldn’t possibly get simpler than that!
This DIY printable challenge encourages kids to explore a variety of new supplies and processes, with custom-designed, ready-to-print badges for achievement in exploring…
- Paper or cardboard
- Paint or watercolors
- Clay or dough
- Yarn or fabric
- Recycled supplies
- Chalk, pastels, or charcoal
- Nature materials
- Printmaking or stamps
- Wood or sticks
- Supplies of your choice (design your own!)
To make your own printable kids art challenge you’ll need:
Note: We prefer to shop locally or use what we have at home, but this list contains a few affiliate links from Amazon and/or Woodpecker Crafts for reference. As Amazon Associates, we make a small commission on qualifying purchases.*
BASIC SUPPLIES:
- 1-3 sheets of 8.5 x 11 heavy cardstock or Avery 2.5-inch diameter printable round sticker labels
- Our Mixed Media Art Challenge Free Printable PDF
OPTIONAL SUPPLIES:
- Scissors or a 2.5-inch circle punch (like this)
- Art and craft supplies for coloring or extra decoration (crayons, cardboard, feathers, ribbon, etc.)
- 2.5-inch DIY buttons, pinbacks, or tie tacks
DIY Printable Mixed Media Kids Art Challenge Instructions:
- Download and print our art supply challenge stickers and collection sheet
Print the desired sticker pages on heavy cardstock or onto Avery 2.5-inch printable round sticker labels. The art challenge collection sheet can be printed on heavy cardstock.
- Cut out if necessary
If using scissors or a circle punch, cut out your art supply challenge stickers.
- Color, decorate, and add embellishments (optional!)
If using the black and white pages, you can color and decorate using fun supplies or craft embellishments like watercolors, feathers, felt, beads, etc.
Note: If decorating your own set of art badges, you may want to do the coloring first, then cut out. It sometimes proves easier for little hands to color on a large sheet rather than trying to hold onto the smaller individual art badges while coloring. - Gather art projects for a challenge
You can create a daily, weekly, or monthly art challenge by picking a project to accomplish for each supply, OR by presenting each supply as an invitation along with a small selection of basic arts and craft materials – let your child lead and explore.
For inspiration, visit our collection of over 50 art projects to help kids explore new mediums. - Use the Art Challenge collection sheet to keep track of progress
Our art challenge sticker collection sheet can be used for goal-setting and progress tracking.
Gather ideas to build your very own art challenge by using our list of 50+ projects to help kids explore new art mediums or grab some of these artist-inspired ideas from the Whitney Museum of American Art, then print out your own set of stickers and art challenge sheets to keep track of your daily or weekly art exploration! With black & white DIY versions, you can actually use these little stickers as an art project of their very own, or turn them into buttons or pins with a couple of basic additions I’ve listed above.
Original Art Challenge Project Ideas from barley & birch
As you might have guessed, you’ll be able to find project inspiration for every medium in the art challenge among our ever-growing collection of activities. Kick your art challenge off with these 9 original b&b ideas…
- PAPER OR CARDBOARD. Use basic geometric shapes to explore motion in art with our fun kinetic shapes paper art project, or cut paper rainbows for this beautiful paper rainbow roads project! We have so many ways to help you earn a badge for cardboard, but our cardboard box city neighborhood is an instant hit with any kid. Our cardboard foldout secret garden or cardboard play pet tank both provide ways to score a few art challenge stickers at once!
- PAINT OR WATERCOLORS. Find new ways to paint with unexpected tools with our name-in-the-stars constellation art, or bubble wrap-painted chameleons. Give your watercolors a workout while you investigate gradients in nature (and on paper!) with these modern mini flower collages.
- CHALK, PASTELS, OR CHARCOAL. Try some scribble art or use pastels in a unique way with our unicorn scratch art project or chalk pastel rainbow softies.
- CLAY OR DOUGH. Grab some clay and create a magical unicorn garden or experiment with salt dough and STEAM processes to make your own magic trick! Our paper straw and play dough fairy forests are a creative, sensory-packed art invitation.
- NATURE SUPPLIES. Our hammered nature process art is a SMASHING good time, or for those of you who experience multi-colored foliage, these gradient leaf banners are a lovely color project. Or recycle a jar to make your own DIY terrarium.
- PRINTMAKING OR STAMPS. Get your stamp on with vegetable-stamped market totes or scrap stamp shape collages.
- WOOD OR STICKS. Use up some fallen sticks with our tissue paper and twig spring flowers or this simple stick hanger for cards and collections. For future woodworkers, our thingamaboard is a SUPER simple wood project for kids and parents to make together, then use for all sorts of creative play!
- YARN OR FABRIC . We have lots of softie ideas, but this cute little DIY crab softie is my very favorite (and made from an old shirt!). You could also try a simple pair of heart hand warmers, or a DIY bean bag gnome softie.
- RECYCLED SUPPLIES. Recycled supplies are the stars of our cardboard toadstool gnome home and DIY flameless camp lantern! And these melted crayon butterflies are a great way to recycle old crayons.
- PICK YOUR OWN SUPPLY. Get creative and come up with your very own art medium! For a couple inspirational places to find unique supply ideas, visit our Plains-inspired bison art or process art play tiles.
*A note about affiliate links: We strive to use simple, earth-friendly supplies that can be purchased locally whenever we can, but sometimes we find the best universally available options, a rare eco-friendly find, or a niche product only available on Amazon or Woodpecker Crafts. When included in our supply list, these products are affiliate links, and if you click-through to make a purchase, we receive a small commission that helps us re-order these supplies!
