Learn how to make puffy paint! It’s cool, puffy, and a fun art activity to liven up what might have been just an ordinary painting project.
Sure, you could paint a pumpkin on a piece of paper with watercolors, but isn’t it more fun to paint and then microwave your art and see it change?! Kids love the unexpected!
Ingredients To Make Puffy Paint
This puffy paint recipe is easy to make and affordable too- it’s basically just some cheap kitchen staples!
Gather up the following ingredients- this recipe makes enough for 2-3 colors:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup of cold water
- food coloring
- squeeze bottles or ziplock baggies
- BONUS- we added pumpkin pie spice to make our paint smell SO YUMMY!
How to Make Puffy Paint
Start by mixing the flour and salt together, then add the water and stir.
It should be the consistency of a slightly thinner pancake mix. You don’t want it to be too thick, or it will get stuck in the squeeze bottles and will mess up the whole activity! Not fun.
Then split the ‘batter’ into as many bowls as you need for the number of colors you want. We used orange and green because we planned to paint pumpkins! Once the batter is split into the bowl, add the food coloring and mix.
Now you’ll need to add the colored batter into the squeeze bottles and put on the lids OR the messier but ultimately still effective way to do this is to pour the colors each into their own ziplock bag. We found the squeeze bottles at the dollar store- it makes it less messy!
If you’re using plastic baggies, cut a tiny corner out from the bottom of the bag so you can squeeze paint out- almost like filling deviled eggs except the hole in the bag needs to be very, very small so the paint doesn’t just ooze out everywhere!
Lay out a piece of construction paper and start designing! Show your child that they just have to squeeze as they draw. This does not have to be pumpkins like ours, your child can do anything from rainbows and unicorns to basketballs and Dalmatian puppies.
Once the designs are finished (ours was a pumpkin with stem and leaves), pop it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. POOF! It’s puffy! If there is a loooooot of paint on your paper, you may need more time in the microwave.
How cool is this? It basically bakes, rising up like bread and making your art 3D!
Puffy Paint Is A Great STEAM Activity
Again, we find an intersection of art and science- which is always a win! Make a hypothesis before the wet paint gets nuked- what will happen?!
What happens inside a microwave? Do things get warm? Cold? So what does temperature have to do with chemical reactions and the solid-liquid-gas states?
Talk! Be amazed! Have fun doing art together ❤️ The days are flying by!
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup cold water
- a few drops food coloring any color
- 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice optional- only for fragrance
Mix the flour and salt together, then add the water and stir. It should be the consistency of a slightly thinner pancake mix.
Split the "batter" into as many bowls as you need for the number of colors you want.
Once the batter is split into the bowl, add the food coloring and mix.
Add the colored batter into the squeeze bottles and put on the lids OR pour the each of the colors into their own ziplock bag.
Start painting!
Once the designs are finished (ours was a pumpkin with stem and leaves), pop it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. POOF! It's puffy!
If there is a loooooot of paint on your paper, you may need more time in the microwave.
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🖌️PIN THIS FOR LATER!🖌️
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