Guest Blogger – Andrea @ Love Is In The Details

So excited for a new guest blogger!! Andrea of Love Is In The Details.

She has a really fun kid tutorial for us today and so excited to share it with you!! Be sure to stop by and check out all her fun tutorials and projects.

And without further ado — take it away Andrea–

Hello Crafty Friends! This is Andrea from “Love is in the Details” and I am thrilled to be guest blogging at Nothing But Country!

Today I’m going to share a tutorial on a super quick, cheap, easy and fun (doesn’t get much better than that) kids craft; Do It Yourself Chalk Paint!

In the past we’ve made Play-doh, Gak, Bathtub Soap Paints, Slime, Silly Putty, Floam, but never Chalk Paint and I don’t know why it never came up, this stuff is great and so incredibly quick and easy to whip up, you Driveway Picassos will be busy creating masterpieces in no time.

I love simple Kid Crafts and you can’t get much more simple than this, you only need three ingredients and a few supplies:

Cornstarch
Assorted Food Colors
Water
Brushes (foam brushes stink for this & shred on the concrete)
Finished Paint Containers (I used the cornstarch buckets, perfect! or you can get a set of disposable bowls at the $ store)

Directions:

Ok pay really close attention, this is pretty complicated 😉 Mix equal parts Cornstarch and Water by hand. Pour into containers and add desired colors, that’s it, you’re done! Here are some tips though, add the water to your cornstarch, not the other way around, for some reason it mixes easier (go figure)

When it was all said and done this project cost me about $6 including the brushes and 4 buckets of cornstarch, you can make a lot less.

At first it will seem as though the cornstarch just won’t mix in, but all at once it comes together. It should be nice and smooth with very little drag on your spoon or wisk.The finished paint may seem thin, but it works great. You can add more cornstarch if you’d prefer a thicker paint. I added extra and ended up adding more water outside because it got too thick, but no worries it’s very forgiving.

Add more color for more intense shades, less for pastels. The food coloring box has recipes on the back for mixing colors if you want a more varied pallet to choose from. I just made four colors, mostly because that’s how many containers I had to pour it back into, I’m pretty deep like that 😉

All done, I just love containers of different color ‘stuff’, I always take pictures of my frostings and batters too. These cornstarch containers were absolutely perfect for the finished paint, they are easy for the kids to carry around and they have nice screw top lids.

As the paint dries it gets brighter and brighter and takes on a total chalk appearance, pretty cool!

And the most important part, all of the little artiest, had so much fun with this and even better the mess was outside!

Summer memories in the making and clean up is a snap, when they’re all done let wee people go nuts with the hose or just wait for the next rain shower, all traces of their handiwork will be erased, so make sure you take a few pictures. Hope you have as much fun as we did!