Homemade Bathtub Paint

Friends: I have a majillion post ideas and drafts floating around right now. But illness, temporarily-out-of-service babysitters (read: grandmas) and general busyness have prevented them from getting finished.

I had an hour tonight, so I thought I’d quickly share something awesome I recently discovered: homemade bathtub paint! It’s very easy, cheap, and fun! And you probably already have all the ingredients on hand.

I found this recipe from The Artful Parent via Pinterest. We gave it a try and loved it (and I took a few mediocre photos to show you. You’re welcome.) It’s not often that Pinterest translates into real life so easily.

Bathtub Paint Recipe:

• 1/2 Cup of Cornstarch
• 1/2 Cup of Water
• 1 Cup of Dish or Hand Soap
• Dye/food coloring

(I used an unscented, uncoloured dish soap made by Nature Clean. I also used a gel food colouring — you can usually find it at a bulk foods store — which gave it the wonderful bright colour. I also love the stuff for making brilliant homemade play-dough. Regular food colouring would work just fine, though, and apparently tempera paint is an option too.)

Dissolve corn starch into cold water. Gently heat in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to bubble and thicken. Add the dish soap and stir until blended. Remove from heat.

You can then separate your paint into as many different colours as you want and dye each one with the food colouring. Store in an airtight container.

I decided to try three colours — red, blue, and yellow — and put them into these half-pint wide-mouth mason jars (I love these guys. I use them for everything). I thought the weight of the glass would be helpful for keeping the paints  in place on the edge of the bathtub. I just needed a tiny bit of the gel food colouring to give it that intense hue — maybe 1/8 of a teaspoon of each colour, which was PLENTY.

When it came to bath time, to further secure the paints in place, I cut a rectangle of shelf liner to lay down on the bathtub edge before setting down the jars. They never budged. (Side note: that shelf liner stuff is handy for all kinds of things. You can get a roll from the dollar store — it’s so cheap. I originally bought it for this project.)

She had to paint everything in sight.

When your munchkin is done, the paint just rinses off. If you let it stay on a while and it dries, you might need to scrub a little, but it will wash right off.

Have you made anything like this? Any other favourite bath-time activities?