Watercolor Fun!

Sweet Pea is 18 months, and we have done a little painting here and there.  We've dabbled in finger painting (huge mess=lots of fun), and water painting on those sheets that have colored dots.  It didn't turn out so well.  So we tried watercolors that I made with the help of Happy Hooligans!

                                                   

Sweet Pea still has a tendency to slip things into her mouth here and there, so I wanted to make sure our watercolors were non toxic.  After looking at several paint recipes and what I had in the pantry, I decided to give this recipe a try. Click on the picture above or the Happy Hooligans link to get the super easy recipe and see Jackie's amazing blog.

I followed the recipe as is, and it did beautifully.  I made it several weeks ago, but we finally got to enjoy it outside on this particularly beautiful warm day last week. 

 These discs of amazing color do come out when you turn the muffin tray over... I speak from experience... hence the cracked green piece. So don't turn them upside down unless your ready for them to come out.  We just kept them in the muffin pans.  This kept the colors from blending all to one giant brown glob, and Sweet Pea could pick which color without any issues.

She loved it!  I tried to get her to go in a process of water, color, paper... water, color, paper... which she did well for a while, but then she just kept going water, paper, color... water.... which defeated the whole color on the paper...  BUT she and I had fun anyway and she got to the color again eventually.  <<<that is one sentence my friends... I'm the queen of run-ons.




At one point, she gave up the brush, put her hand in the water, and started drinking it, saying "mmmmmm."  Crazy kid. :)
(Glad I did the whole non toxic thing)

This is her masterpiece which I absolutely love. The colors were vibrant and moved easily on the watercolor paper.  Even when she loaded down the paper with tons of water, the colors still remained.  AND we still have left over colors!  I let them dry and hopefully this Saturday, we can paint outside again (we are waiting on the weather.)

This recipe can even be used on the cement!  The color stayed amazingly well until I took a hose to my drive and washed away our fun from the week... along with rice and beans that were stuck to my car because I forgot my leftovers on the roof of my car.  Fun times.  Keepin' it real folks, keepin' it real.

Happy Watercoloring!  (may not be a word, but it's okay!) :)

Sharing this blog post on these other sites.  Be sure to check them out for more ideas about fun times with family :)