Simple Summer Craft for Kids, Puffy Paint!

Today I attempted to be a cool mom. After cruising Pinterest I picked out a project that looked low maintenance. I found How to Make Puffy Paint on the blog One Little Project at a Time, by Debbie. I'll admit right now that hers turned out way cuter than ours, but the kids had fun all the same. 

When I look for projects to do with my kids, the first thing I look at are the ingredients. If there are too many, or several that I've never heard of before, I move right along. Thankfully Debbie's Puffy Paint was very simple! The only ingredient I didn't already have was shaving cream, and I found it at the Dollar Tree!

 First, we poured the glue into some disposable plastic cups. The instructions just said to try and add the glue and shaving cream in equal parts, so I decided to see how much glue I had before I started with the shaving cream.

Second, we added the shaving cream. 

I may have a little too much fun squirting it out.

Third, we added the food coloring. I used all 4 colors that came in the food coloring box and then we experimented with the last two cups. I let the kids pick which colors we should try.

Fourth, I let the kids mix away! They were thrilled to see that they'd created orange and purple. This is where I ran into my first couple of issues. I wish I had used bigger containers than the small plastic cups; the paint kept creeping over the edges. Especially since the mixers were a little less than careful. Also, the popsicle sticks that I'd planned on using to mix the paint were too short, so I switched to using BBQ skewers. Yes, I know that sharp sticks are probably not the safest thing to give my children, but I used what I had (and monitored them carefully). 

Their little hands did get tired after several minutes of mixing, so I stepped in to give each of the colors a good stir. I also wanted to make sure that I got all of the glue I'd poured into the bottom of the cups mixed into the shaving cream.

 

 Fifth, It was time to paint! I dressed the kids in some of my old t-shirts, and pulled the girl's hair out of their faces. I also wrapped some hair ties around the extra slack at the neck of their painting shirts so it protected their clothes a little better.

I managed to do most of this project while Thing 4 was napping, but he woke up while the kids were painting. By some miracle, he wasn't interested in the paint, SO we got in a few snuggles while Things 1-3 finished up!

And here are Thing 1 and Thing 2 with their favorite paintings, I must have accidentally deleted the picture of Thing 3:

Although, there were lots of other pictures to choose from:

So after all that, I would recommend this to other moms without hesitating. Although, I might suggest you have them paint outside ;)