Homemade Non-Toxic Finger Paints

Yesterday we looked at juice dyes you can make. Today, here’s something to use those dyes for – finger paints.

What you need to gather:

1. 1/3 cup grated natural, organic, pure soap – liquid soap won’t work as well, I tried once, but give it a shot if you like (I could have just messed up). You can use an old thrift store cheese grater or potato peeler to grate your soap
2. 1 cup water.
3. 1 cup cornstarch.
4. Your natural dyes.

To make:

1. Add 1/2 cup water to your cornstarch and mix.
2. Boil the other 1/2 cup of water and pour over soap.
3. Stir the soap and water until the soap melts.
4. Pour soap mix into the cornstarch mix and blend together with a spoon.
5. Let your mixture sit around and thicken – it shouldn’t take long. Once it’s finger paint thick, pour into separate bowls, and stir in your dye to each of the bowls.

You can keep this for about 2-3 weeks, but store in the fridge. This paint works well on glossy finger pain paper, regular paper, and newsprint. It doesn’t seem to work so well for us on fabrics, because it looks more like a stain than paint.

One thing that’s kind of fun to do on a hot day, is to place an old sheet on the ground (OUTSIDE!) and then place your paper on it. Get some of those long handled paint brushes, and let your kids dip into the paint, then fling paint at the paper. You know, when you pull back a paint brush and let go (is there a better word than fling?). If kids get paint on them, no worries, while I don’t suggest drinking a large glass of it, it’s non-toxic and won’t hurt them; barring soap, or juice dye allergies.