Finger painting

After I read this recent post over at Mama Notes and saw the recipe for homemade finger paints by Raine @ Mama Rants in the comment section, I decided to try to make the paints and see how they worked.

The recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 Tb white sugar
1/2 cup dry cornstarch
1/2 tsp table salt
1 cup cold water
food coloring

Mix the first 4 ingredients in an old pot and cook/stir over low heat for about 10 minutes, until it thickens up, then stir in food coloring and put in containers for painting (baby food jars or apple sauce cups are great).

I mixed up the paint base and made red, blue and yellow paints in some yogurt containers out of the recycling bin. I think I might have let it thicken a tad too much on the stove, though. The first color I mixed was red, and it mixed smoothly. The base had started to kind of "set" while I mixed the red, so the yellow was harder to mix and had lumps in it. The blue I mixed last was even harder to mix and lumpier. I had to keep adding water. I'll keep that in mind for next time.



After I had the paints mixed, I let the boys give them a try.

Logan has NEVER liked finger painting. He hates getting his hands messy. He gave it a tentative try, though



and then gave up and requested brushes, so I gave him my basting brushes.



Jordan wasn't afraid to get in there, though. He dug right in there and had fun making his pictures.











And, as expected, he wanted to taste it. Actually, he wanted to eat it like frosting. I tasted it and it was nasty. I actually did try to keep him from eating too much, but evidence in the next day's diapers indicated he did, in fact, ingest a decent amount of food coloring!





After tasting it, he painted his feet



his legs



his ear



and his paci, which I had originally given him in hopes of keeping his mouth occupied so he WOULDN'T eat paint. No such luck.



The homemade paint unfortunately didn't dry into nice, keepable pictures. It was too thick and cracked and flaked off the pages. Maybe if I thinned it out more, next time it would work better.

Anyway, it was fun, it was messy and it was a great pre-breakfast project.

If you find this project interesting, you also might want to check out the time we made homemade watercolor paints.