Glossy Skittles Paint

Halloween is quickly approaching, which as a mama of a sugar-free kid, means it’s time to get extra creative.  Creative with the goodies we make to hand out to trick-or-treaters, creative with the candy alternatives we have for Miss G, and creative with the mass amounts of treats she’ll inevitably come home with after Halloween night here at The Dunes.

So while we’re still not ready to let Miss G chow down on the sugary sweets she brings home from candy collecting with her little friends, we are more than happy to help her put it to use with art projects, learning activities, and science experiments, and that’s just what we did a couple of days ago.  Using a bag of Skittles, a couple of other things we already had on hand and some inspiration from this post, we created a thick, sticky paint that smells delicious and dries with the most beautiful glossy finish.

Gracen and I love making our own art supplies, and creating this paint was no different. To get started, Miss G and I gathered up our materials…  A big bag of rainbow-coloured Skittles, some corn syrup (the clear kind), and five small containers.

After removing the lids from our containers and setting out our Skittles, Gracen got busy immediately – no instructions required (but of course you could give some direction if needed).

As she sorted the candies by colour, we chatted about which flavours we thought they might be, which colours were our favourites, and which containers had the most and the least candies at the moment.

When each cup had about 25 candies in it, we decided that would probably be enough.

Next came the really fun part – pouring the corn syrup over the Skittles until they were completely covered.  Miss G’s done a ton of pouring in her 3 years, but the best part about corn syrup is that it moves slowly and is therefore perfect for beginner pourers.

With candies fully covered, we waited and watched.  The red Skittles seemed to start losing their colour almost immediately, but the process didn’t start as quickly for the others.  After observing them for a little while, we decided to leave the paints sit and come back to them later in the day.

Early in the afternoon, we came back to our containers to find that the corn syrup in all of the jars had been coloured by the Skittles.  Using our paintbrushes, we gave each a good stir, and realized something as we were doing it… the paints smelled AMAZING!!!  After giving each a smell, we put our paints to the test.  They  were thick, they drizzled beautifully, and they were the prettiest colours.  The one thing that perplexed Miss G, however, was the fact that the purple paint actually looked very similar to the red one while on paper.  We decided that we’d leave the Skittles to marinate a while longer and see if any changes occurred.

When we came back to our paints later on, the first thing on the agenda was to smell them again – yup, still smelled delicious!

We also noticed that the colours had in fact gotten more vibrant.  At this point we did contemplate removing the candies from the corn syrup, but decided that we’d probably lose a lot of the paint in the process, so opted to leave them in.

Then it was time to test them out.  As soon as she started painting, Grae exclaimed, ‘These colours are beautiful beautiful beautifuuuuuul!’

And they truly were.  They are every bit as vibrant as the homemade glitter glue paints we made using super power gel food colourings, which is pretty amazing {and maybe a teensy bit terrifying if you’re a candy lover}.

We let our paintings dry overnight (you may need to wait longer depending on how thick the paint was applied) and then came back to marvel at how beautiful their glossy finish was.  Making and using this paint was so much fun that we will definitely be making another batch in the near future.  I love the fact that we now have a creative way to put some of Miss G’s Halloween candy stash to good use and it would be interesting to see if the same results could be achieved with other candies  – M&Ms? Smarties? Gobstoppers?  We may just have to try it out!

Now the fun part!  Click on the links below to see some other candy-themed painting activities from some of my very favourite kid bloggers around the web!

starburst finger paint     |     painting with licorice      |      nerds watercolours trees

On tap for tomorrow – CANDY SENSORY PLAY!

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