Finger Painting! {+ a DIY Recipe}

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had wanted to start doing more craft/learning projects with little man. Well, Pinterest has been my friend and has been providing me with lots of fun inspiration! Little man has been enjoying our projects so much (I try to do a couple a week) and his favorite thing is probably getting to play with food coloring! Haha! 

One thing I have wanted to do with little man for a long time is finger painting. Now, you may be thinking, what?!? Crazy mom, you haven't finger painted with that poor boy yet?! Well, let me explain. I did try painting with little man once, when he was younger and he wasn't really into it. He lost interest after about 2 minutes. I has just spent quite a bit of time making this paint and didn't really want to put in the effort again if it wasn't going to be met with a little more enthusiasm. Also, hubby and I like to keep things kinda clean... Let's just say we don't have any pictures of little man with spaghetti and sauce all over his body, face and hair. :) We have since realized that our preference for cleanliness has rubbed off on little man. He gets all nervous if he gets too dirty and will hold out his hands for us to clean them. *sigh* Poor little man. So, I have been trying to encourage little man that getting dirty is ok and can even be fun! We've been making mud pits, these finger paints and more!

Enter finger painting fun! I found a recipe on Pinterest (link to the pin here - sorry to say that the link doesn't link to the actual original post, so I'm not sure who to credit for this recipe):

Ingredients:

3 Tbs Sugar

1/2 tsp Salt

1/3 cup Corn Starch

2 cups Water

Directions:

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan. Warm until mixture thickens. Cool and pour into containers. Add food coloring to create desired colors. Enjoy!

Little man helped me measure and mix the ingredients and then I stirred the pot on the stove until it got nice and thick. Once it was cool, I transferred the "paint" to bowls and let little man create whatever colors his little heart desired! The paint is kind of a gloppy, squishy consistency. It's not smooth like I thought it would be, but it does smooth out as you rub it on paper. Also, I haven't ever bought finger paints from the store, so I don't know what it "should" be like. I guess with the ingredients, the finger paint is technically "edible". I don't know if I would recommend it, but at least you don't have to worry about your little one ingesting any toxins. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of using food coloring for projects, since I don't think that they're very "healthy" and they're definitely not organic (red dye #5 anyone?). But, it is easy to use and I'm not sure what else to use to color things like paint.

Little man made yellow, blue, green, lime green, aztec blue and sea-foam green (the last two looked pretty much the same)

I laid out our painting drop cloth and paper with the paint and let little man get to playing with his colors. It was so cute to watch the progression of exploration! First, little man started by gingerly dipping one finger in and then wiping it on the paper.

 

Then he moved on to dipping his finger a little further into the paint.

Then two fingers went in.

 Then little man really started enjoying himself and getting into the "squishy-ness" of the paint and both hands started to go in and he started wiping his hands around on the paper!

  And don't forget to let the feet get in on the action!

Soon we were ready for a second piece of paper and little man started by stamping his hand prints all over!

Little man insisted that mommy add her hand print to the finished product!

He had so much fun! I was so glad that we made the paint and so happy that little man got into it! Little man and I have both been enjoying our craft days! Happy painting!