ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Make your own Watercolours

3 Tablespoons baking soda
3 Tablespoons corn starch
3 Tablespoon white vinegar
2 Teaspoons light corn syrup
Natural food colouring

Mix vinegar, baking soda, corn starch and corn syrup together in a small bowl.

Divide the mixture into several small tubs or jar lids.

Add six to eight drops of food colouring to each tub or lid then mix.

Use Watercolours as they are or let them dry into hard cakes of paint. If you use

them while they're dry, be sure to wet the paintbrush before painting.

Watercolour Tips

Use paste food colouring if you want especially vivid colors and lots of colour choices. Some oil based food colouring will not stir in well, but it will blend perfectly by the time it's dry.You can try and substitute natural food for food colouring, if like our house and do not stock colourings or if this activity would be for older children, purchase some food colouring as being older, will not put into mouth. Is great for mixing colours.If you do not want to use food colouring, try...beetroot juice and spinach juice, carrot juice etc, fresh tumeric root is great as a colouring tool.

Take the opportunity to teach little ones about colour mixing.Could start with purple, green and orange and then go a step further to make mixtures like red-violet and blue-green by adding one part of one primary colour to two parts of another.  Mix all three primary colours to make brown.

You can make a larger batch and make the paints in an old ice cube tray.Other possible containers are empty watercolour kits and pill boxes (the kind with a compartment for each day of the week), you often pick recycled pill boxes up at thrift shops.

The more food colouring you add, the more vivid the paints will be.

These take a long time to dry! Approximately 24 hours. 

If you make them in bottlecaps, you can store the dry paints in a small bag or even

tie a few of them in a handkerchief with a ribbon as a special gift, and write the below

song on a special home-made gift tag.

Home-made Organic Finger Paint

In a saucepan mix 1/2 cup organic cornflour + 2 tablespoons organic sugar + 2 cups filtered water.
Allow to cool slightly.
Pour into a number of jars or tins and colour each with a little food dye or colour.

For colouring try -- Beet Juice - Pink, Spinach Juice or Parsley Powder - Green, Carrot Juice or Paprika Powder - Orange, Turmeric Powder - Yellow. Can also add colourant in any colour you can find at your whole foods or natural market.

A lovely tune to sing whilst painting....

There’s a bridge of wondrous light
Filled with colours shining bright
Red and orange, yellow, green
The fairest colours ever seen
Blue and violet,magic rose
Down from Heaven to Earth it goes.