It’s been quite a week in the CrocoNile den this week. The little man has been teething and also had a cold. Thank God for Calpol and their wonderful vapour plug in as it really has saved our sanity a little this week! Plus I want one for our room at night because I found it so lovely and calming in Nile’s room.
So, as you can see, we have all been a little battle scarred from the trenches his week and I felt like being outside and not thinking about sleep deprivation for a little while. It’s been really nice weather this week and I don’t need much of an excuse to be enjoying the outdoors and knew that the little man must feel the same and want a bit of fun too.
Therefore, I looked into making edible paint and hit the deck, literally, with a fresh batch and some left over nursery wallpaper. There were many recipes for various ones but all made a lot and I only wanted enough for a ten month old so I went with the ratios as a guide and then this is what I came up with.
Recipe:
- Two 80ml cups of cornflour
- 1 80ml cup of cold water
- 3 80ml cups of just boiled water.
- Various colours gel food colouring
Method:
- Put the cornflour in a medium sized bowl and add the cold water. Stir until mixed and smooth.
- Add one cup of boiled water and mix thoroughly. Stir quite quickly as this distributed the hot water.
- Repeat step two with the remaining boiling water and stir well in between. It may be that the last cup isn’t needed or only want a little of it. You’re aiming for a nice poster paint consistency for the one I made but for a thicker one, use less, or thinner add more.
- Divide into small pots eg yoghurt pots to colour accordingly. Stir well to distribute the colour evenly.
Here are the pots I used, there are small glass dessert pots from some chocolate deserts but I would definitely have use plastic yoghurt pots otherwise.
These are the Dr Oetker gel food colours that I had left over from a rainbow cake but they worked a treat. Any gel colours would work but if adding normal liquid food colour I would expect to add less water or colour the whole batch a single colour by adding the colouring to the cold water at stage 2 instead or it will affect the consistency a lot I imagine. I added a little edible glitter but it didn’t show up that well because it was too fine but there may be chunkier ones that you have that could jazz it up a little if you wanted.
Not the best photo but I was really pleased with the nice consistency and pretty pastel colours. This whole make took 5 mins prep and another 5 to clean up the mess I made making it. Now for him to wake up from his nap! No rush, absolutely no rush, haha!
As I’m sure you can guess the first thing he did was spoon a heaping spoonful into his cute little smile, aaahhh. But at least it wasn’t soil so I’m taking the win there!
I made two shape stampers using potatoes just to give him something else to play with but he spent most of the time either finger painting or putting the spoons in and taking them out of the pots. He had a whale of a time!
Also, for older children you could use trucks or cars to drag through the paint or mark make with forks.
One piece of advice though. I had all the things in the bathroom ready for a bath afterwards and clean outfit so I could clean him up quickly. When we were done, I plonked him in the bath to undress him, ran his bath then he could go straight in it. This made it nice and easy to go from this activity to lunch and then a nap, bonus.
I hope you have as much fun doing this as we did. It made Nile babble and talk loads and he laughs at the photos when I show him on the iPad so I think he was impressed.
Have fun!
Gem x
Footprints in the Sand 