Watercolor and Salt Paintings

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I love the reaction that occurs when you combine salt and watercolors. Salt paintings are a fun process that your kids will love.

Try sprinkling salt on a freshly painted watercolor picture and see what happens. It is lovely. Another cool process is painting on the salt with watercolors. This is a messy process, but a fun one that will certainly delight your kids. A word of warning, this technique is more about the process and the fun than the final product. There are changes that occur to the paintings upon drying. We have included some notes and suggestions about the salt paintings at the bottom of the post.
Watercolor and salt paintings. This is a cool process that the kids will love. Arts and crafts for kids

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What you will need:

Cardboard, Watercolor paper or thick card stock

School glue

Table Salt

Liquid Watercolors or food coloring

Directions:

Draw a picture or a design by squeezing the glue on a piece of watercolor paper or card stock.

My daughter made a large flower. She got tired while filling it in and used a brush to push around the glue, which worked nicely.

Cover the glue design with salt. Once all of the glue is covered, tip the paper to remove the excess salt. I recommend dumping it onto another piece of paper so that you may fold it up and pour it into a plastic bag to save for a later art project.

Now you are ready to paint. Dip a paint brush in watercolors or food coloring and touch it to the salt and watch as the color spreads. Some areas will spread more than others. Tap your brush all around your design and see. Add other colors side by side and watch them blend into each other. When you are done, lay your picture flat to dry. Dry time will depend on the amount of glue used.

My daughter observed that her blue spread the fastest and enjoyed “racing” her colors.

My little girl took her time adding her color.  She covered every inch of her design.

This was a process that she really enjoyed. I’m am certain that we will have many salt paintings in our future.
Salt and watercolor paintings. This is a cool process that the kids will love. Arts and crafts for kids

She made one more.

I, of course, wanted to have some fun too and made a couple of fall themed salt paintings of my own. The fall tree is perfect for playing around with color blending.

Salt painted fall tree. Watercolor and salt paintings. This is a cool process that the kids will love. Arts and crafts for kids

I made one more quick spider web before we were through.

Salt and watercolor paintings. This is a cool process that the kids will love. Arts and crafts for kids

A few notes on this process.

It can get messy. Kids and salt shakers equals messy fun.

We tried tried this on cardboard, watercolor paper and on the card stock.  The card stock results varied. The watercolors might run off of the salt onto the paper upon sitting depending on the card stock. The cardboard and watercolor paper worked best in this aspect.

The colors will mute upon drying and the salt might crumble and fall off. The cardboard was the best for keeping the salt intact, while the salt did crumble on both papers. You can flick the back of the paper over the trash to remove the large chunks of salt, if you are thinking about saving it. This will leave a thin layer of salt, so the texture will still be there.

 

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Salt painted fall tree. Salt and watercolor paintings. This is a cool process that the kids will love. Arts and crafts for kids

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