Playing with Baking Soda

Ever since we colored our Easter eggs using a mixture of baking soda, food coloring and vinegar Sweet Girl has been dying to do them again.  And since I didn't really feel like dying more eggs (such a mess!) I decided to just let her play around with a big dish of baking soda and some food coloring mixed with vinegar.

She used eye droppers to drop some of the food coloring/vinegar mix into the baking soda pan.  She LOVED watching the baking soda foam up....and the colors were great. 

She played with this until all the cups of food coloring were empty (note to self....use larger cups next time!!)

Have fun!!

DIY Watercolors

I'm always on the lookout for natural art products, especially since my little man is still at the age where he loves to "taste-test" everything.  When I came across this recipe at Lilac Silhouette for watercolor paints I was super excited to make them.

Supplies needed:

Baking soda

Cornstarch

Vinegar (the recipe calls for white but I used apple cider)

Light corn syrup

Food coloring

Combine 3 tablespoons each of the baking soda, cornstarch and vinegar and add 1 1/2 teaspoons of the corn syrup. Mix completely. Pour the mixture into paint trays (my trays came in a six pack from Michaels).

Stir in a drop or two of your food coloring to create your desired palette and leave out to solidify for several hours. I let ours "dry" for about four hours, but there was still some water on top, which I just wiped off.

(updated....they were perfect after drying overnight)

Here are our watercolors after I wiped off the top layer of water.

Sweet Girl was so ready to dive right in and paint.

So fun!

Happy painting!