Making Paint At Home Can Be Easy!

Here are 4 ways to make paint using materials you or your students have in your kitchens! This is great for distance learning and at-home art time. If you don’t have many art materials at home, try these 4 ways to create paint and then – get CREATIVE!

Elizabeth

 

 

 

 

I’ve been hearing from so many teachers that, when they’re trying to give assignments to their students, they just don’t know what materials their students have at home.
 
Well, I’ve got a little solution!
 
So, if you’re, a teacher trying to figure out what kind of material students have at home that they can maybe use for an art project or some kind of an assignment that you want to give them, I’ve got a couple of solutions today.
 
 
I want to give you four ways that you can actually create paint using materials that almost everybody is gonna have at home and I’ll give you a couple of suggestions on how you can tweak the recipes so that all students can find a little bit of success.
 
 

Basic Paint

So we are gonna start with a very basic paint with some really simple ingredients.

I’m gonna be making just two colors.  I’ve got two cups ready to roll and I’m going to use 1 tablespoon of flour for each of the cups, also 1 tablespoon of salt for each and then 1 tablespoon of water for each.

So it’s one part flour, one part salt, and one part water.

 

And then you may have guessed, we’re gonna mix them up and add some food coloring. And that’s it! We are ready to paint.
 
Now I’m using some drawing paper here so it’s a little bit thicker. If you’re using regular paper, you might find that it’s a little too thin and if that’s the case, go ahead and check out your recycling bin. I found some good cardboard and I started doing some of the paint on the back of it.
 
You can also try some different techniques like using utensils or even get a little fun and start using your fingers. I even try using a little bit of a paper towel. The key here is to have some fun and experiment.
 
 
So here are my examples. . . I never said I was an artist, but I did have some fun now when you’re done, you can store this paint in a container and use it for later, but make sure you clean up.

 

Paint with Coffee

 
Now for this next paint. We are going to use coffee so for this. You actually take the coffee from the coffee pot and you can start painting with it now. The coffee from the coffee pot was actually a little too light in color, so I boiled some of the coffee in a pan and came out with an even darker shade. Now you could actually boil two different pots of coffee if you want dark roast, light roast kind of experiment with that. But I decided to just boil it and evaporate some of the water out of the same coffee and came out with a little bit of a different color.

 

Spice Paint

Now before we move on in my masterpiece, I want to introduce you to spice paint.

You may have guessed it. I’m gonna use some spices. So I found these little containers from the recycling bin. They’re actually, my cat food containers and I just put some spices inside and added a little bit of water and mixed them up and, of course, different spices, different colors, you’re getting a different, colored spice paint.
 
 
So for this I used paprika, which got me that nice red and then I used some cumin and got that orangey yellow color. Now you could probably mix it better than I did and make it really nice and smooth instead of that texture. But you might like that texture as well and, of course the painting was really nice and smelled great.
 
I had some fun painting with some spices and then also mixing it with those different shades of coffee. So just have some experimentation time and have some fun with it.

 

Watercolor Paint

And now our final homemade paint watercolor paint. So the recipe calls for four tablespoons of baking soda and two tablespoons of vinegar and that’s always a fun chemical reaction to watch. Mix that up and then you’re going to add a half of a teaspoon of Karo syrup, preferably the light kind, and then the final ingredient is 2 tablespoons of corn starch. But I did not have corn starch, so I used flour instead, two tablespoons of that and mix it up really well.
 
Again, I went to the recycling bin and grab some of those cat food containers and they worked really well. You could also use little bottle caps or really what’s ideal is an ice cube tray because then, when it’s done, you can really use it like a watercolor set.
 
 
Alright next is, of course, food coloring, and then you get a mix up each of those colors really really well. Now, this kind of paint takes a little bit of time, because you need these to dry, so they’re going to dry for at least 24 hours.
 
 
Now, I have to admit it was kind of hard waiting that long to actually use these paints, but let me tell you using them once they were done, it was really really worth the time.
 
 
I had a lot of fun painting with these watercolor piece. Any ideas now, if you don’t have all the ingredients at home for one of the different ways to create the paint, that’s okay. Look at what you do have you may find that you can find a solution to your problem, a substitution for a different ingredient that maybe you don’t have that’s what some of my students did.
 
 
You know they didn’t have enough salt, so they tried a little something different or they didn’t have food coloring, so they went into their pantry and looked for different sauces that might actually create a different color that they would like to use so there are so many possibilities right inside your home. All you have to do is look around and get a little creative.
 
 
I hope you have a lot of fun with this. Good luck with your painting, and, you know what, I would love to see some of your examples. So if you want to share an example of a painting that you did using any one of these, or maybe some other ideas that you may have, put it in the comments. Type in what you did. Type in what kind of project you created or you could even add a picture. Now that would be pretty cool to see.
 
 
 
Alright, I can’t wait to hear from you guys and enjoy your painting at home.

Resources

Lessons Using Homemade Playdough (and the instructions on how to create it)

https://youtu.be/dhpwbEWvEIk 

 

Remote Teaching Resource PackFREE Remote Teaching Resource Pack

theinspiredclassroom.com/remoteteaching 

Get your hands on this folder of resources which includes:

✅Learning from Home 10 page resource for students including printable activity pages.

✅ Teaching from Home 10 page resource for YOU to help you with this transition and keep you organized and creative.

✅ A digitally fill-outable schedule.

✅ A video you can share with your students teaching them a fun movement game.

✅ A video showing students how to create a mini-book you can use for just about any assignment.

✅ An activity to help students understand what they do and do not have control over during this time.

✅ Poetry resource How to Make a Dada Poem

Grab access to this fantastic folder filled with FREE resources!

theinspiredclassroom.com/remoteteaching

 

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