Caramel Apple Cider Paint

I love making homemade paints. This one was definitely one of my favorites. It was Caramel Apple Cider Paint! It makes beautiful pictures that are scented with an amazing fall smell.

Now, I wasn't measuring so the recipe isn't exact. And it also depends on how much paint you need to make, but it's very easy to figure out. You mix all purpose flour with apple cider to make the paint. If it's too watery you add more flour, if it's too thick you add more apple cider. Then to turn it into caramel apple cider paint you mix in a pack of Caramel Duncan Hines Frosting Creations. You might need to add more apple cider after this step, but maybe not. 

I gave my daughter the paint in a bowl, with some paper and a rubbery paint brush. Any paint brush would work however. 

Homemade Pastel Paints for Easter

My daughter and I decided to great creative and make some Homemade Pastel Paints the other day to do some Easter crafts with! Making homemade paint is a great activity for kids to have fun in the kitchen. They can help with the measuring, pouring, and stirring! There may be a little mess involved if you let them just go at it, but at least it's not a recipe you'll be eating in case things go awry!

First, you'll need to get out all your ingredients. My daughter loves helping get everything we'll need and set it all out on the counter.

You'll need:

- All-purpose flour (I buy a huge bag from Target that I use only for sensory play/paints

- Neon purple food coloring

- Green food coloring

- Yellow food coloring

- Neon pink food coloring

- Water (you'll end up needing quite a bit more than a cup if you're making big batches like we did)

- Something to put the paint in (pictured is our paint palette, but we actually used 4 regular bowls to make the paint in, you'll see them further down)

- Spoons

- A fork

Note: If your bottles of food coloring don't have the squeeze one drop out at a time function like ours did, you might want to use a pipette or eye dropper to add the food coloring in to the paints so you don't add too much. You probably won't though cause quite a bit is still needed to get any color at all, but I know I'm guilty of pouring out way more than needed with the open/pouring style food coloring bottles.

So, depending on how thick you want your paint to be how much flour and how much water you use will vary. I didn't measure out what I was using, it's not an exact science. You can add some flour to each bowl first if you want, or just go one at a time. Use a fork to get the clumps out of the flour before you add the water, I forgot to do this the majority of the time and our paints ended up having some clumps in them. Then add water and mix the two together, adding more water or more flour to get the finger paint consistency that you're after. My daughter enjoyed the mixing!

Once you have that mixed pretty much all the way you can start to add the coloring. Obviously you only use one color per bowl. Start with a drop or two and add more as needed to get the right color. I seemed to need to add some more flour after this step to thicken it up more and help the colors look more pastel, but things might go differently for you depending on how much of what you already used.

When you've got all 4 paints made they should look something like this

You can see how some of ours were a bit clumpy, and how we had more of some colors than the others. I spooned some into my daughter's paint palette so she could get creating without having all 4 big bowls in front of her.

She got right to painting!

 Adorable!

Note: This paint either needs to all be used the day it is made, or stored in the refrigerator. It will get funky not since there is food ingredients used to make it.

Edible Apple Pie Paint

In the fall season there's lots of talk of apples and apple pie, but these things go on in other seasons too so I'm sharing it now in spring anyways!

Lots of people are always searching for "edible" paint recipes that they can use to allow their babies or young toddlers to get creative without fear they'll ingest something toxic. This paint recipe is totally edible, but still the ingredients aren't things I'd want my daughter eating really. She doesn't eat the paint though so it's not a cause of concern for us. Many parents would not mind there kids ingesting this paint either.

To make this wonderfully scented sensory paint just put some whipped cream in a bowl (we used the kind that comes out of a spray can). Then add a drop of green food coloring and mix it in with a spoon or a straw. Then shake in some spices that you like for apple pie. We used cinnamon and a little bit of nutmeg.

I gave my daughter a small paint brush to use with her paint. She made some beautifully smelling art work!

Sand Paint

This is a really fun sensory paint that you can use for summer crafts with your kids. It's really easy to make too! You just squirt the desired amount of washable tempera paint into a paint pot or bowl, whatever you'll be using. Then you shake in some sand and mix it together.

It's a great sensory experience to finger paint with these paints. Kids will experience an all new texture as they use it.