The Grouchy Ladybug

We've been reading a few books from the library lately and one of them is "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle.  We read both the English and Spanish version, "La Mariquita Malhumorada".  So I decided to use another used carton from the bottom of a frozen pizza to make a ladybug.

MD had fun making it even though a was process that took a couple of days to finish.  Not that it was complicated, it's just we needed time for the layers of paint to dry and by the time the paint was dry I was busy with something else around the house.

I found another spare piece of carton in the garage to cut out the shape of the body to paint black.

But we ran into a problem.  I had never ever realized that we don't have any black tempera paint in the house.  So we improvised.  I use to work with oil paints and always made black by combining blue and brown.  So I tried it with tempera paints.  That made a dark grey color, to which I added black food color, and there you have it.  Black paint!

On the last day, MD glued black construction paper dots to the bugs wings, and I stapled it all together, adding small pipe cleaner antennae and googly eyes.  I also grabbed a piece of chalk to draw in a mouth and asked MD if we wanted me to add a grouchy mouth or a happy mouth.  He chose happy.