Painting Your Emotions in Jars

I don’t know about you, but we are experiencing and feeling a whole range of emotions as we may our way through COVID-19. Anxiety, sadness, anger, hope are just a few of the many emotions we are feelings regularly. I recently spent some one-on-one time with my 9 year old child who loves to paint. I was inspired by a class I saw on Outschool.com and suggested we paint what our emotions would look like if they were in jars. She loved the idea and off we went.

We both LOVED visualizing what our emotions looks like, what color they were, and how they would fill up or sit in a jar. This is what my emotions ended up looking like:

If my emotions were in a jar…

I took the idea to Instagram and the idea got a life of its own. People started sharing the emotions they would put in a jar and imagined what it would look like. So I created a simple handout for you to do the same activity at home. You can print it out on regular paper OR you can just draw up your own jars on watercolor paper and let your creativity go.

You can use any art supplies including:

• Crayons

• Markers

• Colored pencils

• Found objects

Anything that expresses how you imagine the emotion to look like!

A few other ideas:

If you were to group or order your emotions on a pantry shelf, how would you order them?

If you’re feeling sad, which emotion or emotions would you add to that jar to support what you need?

What color, texture, or smell do the jars create when they are mixed? For example, what happens when shame and embarrassment mix?

Print your jars on card stock and cut each one out. Create a shelf and place the emotions you feel or want to feel for the day.

Use your jars as a daily emotional check in.