Finger Painting for Mothers Day

Having kids has already made every holiday 1000x more fun. Mothers Day before? Lunch, maybe some shopping (meh). Mothers Day now (well, not only do I get spoiled… but!) we get to make all the new grandmas gifts AND they’ll love it more than anything we could have bought.

In full disclosure, we really took on this craft for Daddy’s birthday (which was last week) but made extra so we could check Mothers Day off our list too. I don’t think it’s ever too early to let them get dirty and create. My kids loved playing with the different colours (and tasting them too) and we ended up with some pretty fun mementos to gift. Want to give it a shot with your little ones? Here’s what I did.

I hunted for some easy, edible paint recipes and the easiest that kept popping up was simple flour and water. Just mix it up and add some food colouring. We didn’t have food colouring drops so I used gel and that worked great (and gave me vibrant colours). I wanted to use the paintings to send as cards and snail mail, so I used a thicker paper. I had a watercolour tablet that I stole pages from, but I’m sure any paper is fine.

Make sure your kiddos are well rested (mine weren’t which made bath time afterwards a bit of a marathon). And set up a camera to capture them having fun. My tripod is packed away so I used a box to prop up my camera and it was a fail. The box got bumped and we’re missing the top of the kids heads in most of the photos. So if you have a tripod (or even a bean bag) use it! I set my camera on a 10 second continuous shooting mode so I could get dirty and not think about what was being captured.

Then let them at it! I needed to show Emmitt that he could touch it, but Aubrey poured one of the bowls out before I even got back from turning on the camera. Then enjoy watching them squeal in delight as they make their first masterpieces.

This ‘paint’ needs quite a bit of dry time since it’s so thick and goopy. Once it’s dry, I found it was really warped. I took the paper and ironed it on a low dry heat setting between two towels and that flattened them up enough that mailing would be easy.

Turn them into cards or postcards, include a couple snapshots of the cards in the making (for extra cute points) and pop it in the mail! Much better than chocolate :) Or frame it up for your nursery!

What are your plans for Mothers day? My sister is in town so we’re surprising my Grandma and Mom with a four generations photo… can’t wait!

XO -C