How to Make Puffy Paint Without Shaving Cream and Glue (Super Easy Recipe!)
Whipping up a batch of puffy paint is a great way to get your kids outside and let them be creative.
If you’ve made puffy paint before, you’ve probably used shaving cream and/or glue.
While that’s a perfectly respectable way to make it, this recipe doesn’t either of those ingredients.
In fact, this is so ridiculously easy to make that calling it a “recipe” is a bit of a misnomer. All you need is flour, water, and washable kids’ paint.
Table of Contents
A science-y kind of warning about this paint recipe:
Apparently mixing flour and water together creates a natural yeast, which could cause this puffy paint to slowly continue to expand.
So if you make a ton of this paint and store the leftovers in a full bottle, the pressure could cause the lid to pop off and the paint to overflow.
Which, actually, your kids might think is pretty cool. But you might not, depending on where you stored the bottle of paint.
If you’re the adventurous type, you could make this into a family experiment. Fill a couple bottles with different amounts of leftover paint, mark where the paint comes to in the bottle, and see what happens to them overnight. Just make sure you put down newspapers or keep the bottle somewhere that it doesn’t matter if you wake up to a point explosion.
Also, a couple thoughts about spooning the paint mixture into the squeeze bottles:
- If you have a funnel, I highly suggest that you use it. It will make the transfer a lot easier and less messy.
- If you don’t have squeeze bottles, you can create a makeshift one by could spooning the paint mixture into a quart-sized ziploc bag and snipping off the corner.
More Painting Activities for Kids:
Puffy Paint Ingredients
- Flour
- Water
- Washable Kids Paint
- Large Mixing Bowl
- Whisk
- Silicone Spatula
- Disposable Spoons
- Clear plastic squirt bottles with lids
- Funnel (optional)
Puffy Paint Directions
- Put 1 cup of flour in a large mixing bowl.
- Pour in 1 cup of water.
- Mix very well with the whisk to get rid of any clumps.
- Use a disposable spoon to add 2-3 spoonfuls of kids paint to the flour and water mixture.
- Again, stir well with the whisk.
- Pour the mixture into the clear plastic squirt bottle, using a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl.
(If you’re as messy as I am, you’ll want to use a funnel for this!)
- Repeat steps 1-3 with a different color …
- … until you have 4 or 5 bottles of paint.
Now it’s time to get outside and decorate your driveway or sidewalk!
We made a green dinosaur with yellow spots. We started by making the outline, then filling it in with green zig-zags.
Then we added some spots ….
… and gave him (her?) a face.
More Fun with Dinosaurs
DIY Puffy Paint
Materials
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup water
- Washable Kids Paint
Tools
- Large mixing bowl
- Whisk
- Silicone Spatula
- Disposable spoons
- Clear plastic squirt bottles with lids
- Funnel (optional)
Instructions
- Add 1 cup of all purpose flour to the large mixing bowl.
- Pour in 1 cup of water.
- Mix very well with the whisk to get rid of any clumps.
- Use a disposable spoon to add 2-3 spoonfuls of kids paint to the flour and water mixture.
- Again, stir well with the whisk.
- Pour the mixture into the clear plastic squirt bottle, using a spatula. (A funnel can make this easier and less messy.)
- Repeat with a different color until you have 4-5 bottles of puffy paint.
- Have fun decorating your driveway or sidewalk!
Notes
This paint does not keep well, so try to make the amount you need for one day.
The flour to water ratio is 1:1, so it's easy to adjust for your needs.
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