Potato Print Walrus Card – Fun Artic Animals
Finally getting to share these cuties from back in Dec/ January!!! It has been a little hectic here. We love making quick and easy Thank You Cards that are fun for the kids to make in the period after Christmas.. before they head back to school. We have been having fun with potato print animals for a few years now.. and adding to our cute Polar Bears and Penguin cards, we now have the artic Potato Print Walrus Card. Isn’t he ADORABLE? Switch the colours out to greys and they would make cute Potato Print Seals too!
Walrus Valentines Card / Walrus Mother’s Day Card/ Walrus Birthday Card
We like turning ANY of our greeting cards into “multi purpose” or “multi occassion cards”. Though of course we made our walrus print card as “Thank You Cards” after the Christmas period, I think you can easily adapt it for Valentines Card making, Mother’s Day Cards or Birthday cards (particularly for anyone feeling “old”). Here are some Walrus related puns and messages you can add (plus a couple of sneaky seals if you want to use those instead:
- Walrus of Love
- I Walrus Love You
- Just floating by to say…
- Flawless, like the Walrus
- Seal of approval
- Your SEAL-rously old
You can then also add Birthday Party Hats, balloons or paper heart shapes to your Walrus cards to add the finishing touch for the occasion you are using the handmade card for!
Craft Supplies Neeed to make Potato Stamping Walruses
- A potato
- A sharp knife (adults only)
- Cardstock (I had a nice set of cream A6 cards left over from some Christmas card sending)
- brown paint
- White paint
- Black markers/ pink markers
- A little piece of paper for the tusks – scraps will do
- A little glue
- Scissors
- OPTIONAL: tissue paper in different blues*
- OPTIONAL: googly eyes (but I prefer not to use them these days and be more eco friendly!)
Please note: I had a rummage in the craft box to see if I had any blue tissue paper/ crepe paper and hurrah – I did! But please don’t rush out and make expensive purchases at hobby lobbly or the dollar store. Crafting should always be inexpensive, as eco friendly as possible and based using materials you already have!
So if you don’t have blank greeting cards, cut card and fold it (you can make lovely square greeting cards then). Or use construction paper and stick it to some recycled card. If you don’t have brown paint.. maybe you can use black and white paint to make grey walruses? Or blue or purples… really.. work with what you have!
How to make Potato Print Walrus greeting cards – Step by Step instructions
Potato printing is a really fun project to do with kids of all ages. But preschoolers especially love working with them. A great opportunity to get stuck in and get messy!
A top tip: sometimes the potato “sucks” onto the paper and can be tricky to lift off. Or sometimes preschoolers with sensory issues may not like the feel of the paint… you can use a fork as a “handle” to your potato to make things easier!
The first two steps are more imporant than you think.. so please read on carefully:
1 Cut the Potato with a sharp knife
Obvioulsy, you have to cut the potato! Ha. And it is tempting to let your preschooler give this ago – especially if you subscribe to the school or learning by doing. But I recommend you cut the potato in half FOR your kindergartners or preschoolers. You want to get a smooth a surface as possible, so that the potato print, prints evenly! This is best achieved with a sharp knife! So please, do cut the potato in half for your kids. Length ways for an adult walrus potato. And across its width for a baby walrus potato!
2 Pat your potato dry
Again, this a not so obvious step and many people often skip it! But a dry potato will hold the paint better and also print better! So do dry it on an art cloth or a piece of kitchen paper towel first.
3 Load your potato with Walrus coloured paint
We like adding paint to our potato with a paint brush… but you can just add paint to a dish or plate and dip the potato in.
4 Make your walrus body potato print
Time to finally get printing! Make your walrus body potato print. Press down carefully with your fingers to get an even print all around. You can print twice if you wish!
5 Add your fingerprint Walrus Features
I love that this preschooler walrus art project also incorporates some fingerprinting. Great sensory fun, but also a lovely way to create some fingerprint keepsake art.
You will need to make two fingerprints at the base of the potato walrus body with your fingers. These are the walrus’s flippers.
Add a little white paint to your brown, to make a lighter brown/ beige colour, for the walrus’s face. Make two more fingerprints.
Now let your walrus dry fully!
6 Add walrus facial features with markers
Now it is time for some walrus eyes, a nose and some details to the walrus feet!
7 Walrus tusks made from scraps of paper
The walrus tusks are simply paper triangles cut out from scrap pieces of paper and glued in place with a glue stick!
Isn’t this little walrus art project adorable??? You can either leave the walrus “as is” or you can decorate it further if you wish! We made a combination of Thank You Cards, Birthday cards and Valentine’s Day card!
Work with what materials you have already and don’t purchase anything new! I found different coloured blue tissue paper in my craft box and added the ocean – though my daughter thinks it looks like the Northern lights.. I guess that works too!
Isn’t this guy cute? Anyway.. the kids are no busy writing IN the Potato Print Walrus Cards, so we can then go off and post them to our relatives as Thank Yous for their Christmas gifts!
There are a number of antartic/ arctic animals you can explore! From owls (the right shape for potatoes for sure!) to penguins and polar bears. And yes, before you say anything.. penguins live on the antartic.. but they still make a great Winter Animal Art theme!!
And here are the lovely Potato Print polar bears. Aren’t they cute? And so easy to make too!
And as we head OUT of the Winter season and into Spring.. how about these cutest of cute potato print frog cards? As with the walrus (and all the potato print animals), you can easily customise it for different occasions:
Check out more fabulous Winter Card Making ideas suitable for your annual Thank You Card Writing, including our fun potato stamping penguins:
Feeling inspired? The Royal Academy as more fantastic vegetable print making art project for you to explore!