Green MacGyver Paints – Eco-friendly Crafts for Kids
Spring is here and summer is around the corner so we’d like to share some eco-friendly craft ideas to keep the kids busy and toxin-free.
Here we have some great paint recipes. Painting is fun and allows for endless hours of creativity for kids but the store bought stuff is generally full of chemicals and toxins. These recipes are easy to make and uses common ingredients found in most pantries. Not all of us are going to have food colouring so that may have to be bought but other than that you should be good to go. This is a great eco-friendly craft idea that is toxin-free and can keep them busy for hours while allowing their creative juices to flow. Oh and they are really easy to clean. Right then…let’s get to it.
1. Easy Face Paint
This is the easiest to make (and easiest to clean) recipe for face paint. Separate colors with a muffin tin or an egg carton. Place a spoonful of cold cream into each cup. Add 1 or 2 drops of different colors of food coloring to the cold cream, and stir. Apply the face paint using a clean paintbrush or cotton swabs.
2. Spiffy-Sniffy Watercolors
Your artwork will smell terrific with this simple watercolor recipe. Use a small cup for each color. Mix one package of powdered drink mix (Kool-Aid) with 2 tablespoons of warm water for each color. Stir until the powder dissolves. Once all of the colors are prepared, use a clean paintbrush to paint sweet-smelling pictures.
3. Window Paint
Turn your windows, patio doors and mirrors into works of art. Mix together equal parts dishwashing liquid and washable liquid paint or powdered tempera. Children will love the process of painting and adults will love the end result: the paint wipes off easily with a dry paper towel.
4. Foamy Bath Paint
Encourage children to paint undersea adventure scenes while taking their evening baths. To make bath paints, simply mix together shaving cream with a drop of food coloring. Dip a paintbrush, or better yet, your fingers, into the mix and start creating!
There you have it. We have to thank Deborah Sheldon from Allfreecrafts.com for these great ideas. Simple and fast to make and will serve to fuel creative minds for hours in a healthy manner. An eco-friendly craft is a great way to keep kids entertained when they aren’t in school. Enjoy.
I love these ideas!! Over at my blog (mysimplegreenbaby.wordpress.com) we’re systematically trying to find chemical-free alternatives for everything in our homes–I’ll definitely be directing readers to this series one at some point.
[...] professional-quality paste food dyes, which are stronger and will definitely stain. Most folks use cold cream as the carrier for the dyes, but I prefer to use the same gentle diaper cream left over from when my kids were babies; if [...]
Pure Painters use a Shellac based primer over surfaces that have previously been painted with oil-based paints. Also kids furniture, and toys.
Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lack bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. Thousands of these tiny insects colonize branches of suitable host trees and secrete the resinous pigment. The coated branches of the host trees are cut and harvested as shellac. It is processed and sold as dry flakes (pictured below), which are dissolved in a wood alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish. Shellac functions as a tough all-natural Primer, sanding sealant, tannin-blocker, oder-blocker, stain, and high-gloss varnish. Shellac is mixed with sugar and sprayed over M&M’s chocolate candy so it “melts in your mouth and not in your hands.”