In preparation for Little G’s Valentine’s Day tea, this morning we experimented with making our own finger paint.  I found the recipe on Pinterest a long while back, and knew it would come in handy one day soon.

Gracen carefully added all of our ingredients into a large measuring cup first…

And then enthusiastically mixed it up!

Then we warmed the mixture on the stove…

Separated it into small bowls, added a few drops of food colouring, and stirred it well.  It looks pretty, right?

We’ll have to use the paint a little more (right now we’ve just got in zip-close bags for mess-free painting), but I’m not sure that I’m sold on this recipe.  Although it’s very quick and easy to make, uses ingredients that most people already have in their kitchen, and has a great texture while warm, ours turned out like Jello when cooled.  It did soften up again when stirred well, but I think next time we’ll try cutting down the amount of corn starch a little.  The other important thing that the recipe doesn’t mention is that the mixture needs to be stirred constantly while heating.  We didn’t do that the first time around and ended up with a clumpy, bumpy mess!  We’ll have to see what it looks like when we actually put it on paper…