Tin Foil Snowflake Prints – The Pinterested Parent

As you all know, we love printmaking. Tin foil prints are great because there is very little set up and they are easy enough for kids of all ages. We have made foil prints many times, but for these snowflake prints, we wanted to use negative space to make our designs. Here’s how!

We played around with these a bit to find what worked best. This is what we found.

First thing first, we used tempura paint to paint a piece of tin foil. The paint seemed to coat the foil best when it was painted in a circular pattern. Do not use too much paint or when you press your paper on the paint to make a print, the paint will spread and close up your designs. The thicker you draw in your lines, the better the results.

We tried a few different methods for removing the paint to make our designs.

The first way was with our fingers. While this worked wonderfully for drawing into the paint, it was really messy.

Next, was Q-tips… The Q-tips made great lines, but filled up with paint too quickly and I had to use several to create a simple snowflake design.

The one that seemed to work best for both me and my daughter was using a clean damp paint brush. If the brush filled up with too much paint, we would just wipe the brush off or rinse it in our rinse cup as we went along.

Another option would be to use tape to form your snowflake shapes and then paint over it.

Place a piece of white paper over your design and press lightly and then peel back the paper to reveal your print.

We made several snowflakes. Some came out more defined than others and had perfect sharp lines, others lost a little bit of their sharpness, but still made a lovely snowflake design nonetheless. For a simpler printmaking idea, paint your designs directly onto the foil and then make your prints.