Rather than “hug me” or “kiss me,” children painted conversation heart canvases with messages like “text me” at the Valentines Kids Canvas Workshop at Color Me Mine on Sunday.
“Generally speaking, we theme it with the season or with something that’s going on,” said co-owner Stacey Michrowski. “In February, what more perfect thing than Valentine’s Day. So my cousin Heather, who is my co-owner in the studio, and she’s also a local mom out here, she came up with this conversation hearts design.”
Over a dozen children visited the store and sat down to paint hearts which were already drawn in pencil on the canvases. From there, assistant manager Maisy Jacobsen worked with the children as they layered their canvases and added glitter and unique messages on their conversation hearts.
Michrowski said the idea behind these messages where to make them more relevant for the year 2019, so “tweet me” and “text me” were some examples of messages children used.
“That’s one thing about us too that I think families appreciate is that even though this is the conversation hearts canvas and we have the template for it, if the child doesn’t want to paint a purple heart, or a blue heart, or they don’t want to do the background, they can not,” Michrowski said. “So it’s all about individual expression.”
Elenna Yanez and her four-year-old daughter Zoey were with the group. Zoey’s canvas, upon completion, shined under the store lights as a thin layer of glitter was doused on it.
“She’s kind of artsy, so why not?” Yanez said. “She was all about the glitter, so glitter everywhere.”
Zoey only painted one message on one of her conversation hearts, “I love you.”
