Valentine Card for Daddy

 

 Thanks to Pinterest, every crafty idea I see, I want to immediately turn into a reality. And not just any reality but one that I drag my entire family into.  With all the fun Toddler Art projects floating around, making fingerpaint from scratch was just a matter of time. Add Valentine's Day in there and it's a recipe for reds, pinks and fun messes.

 

Fingerpaint Recipe

2 cups flour

1/4 cup salt

3 cups boiling water

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

Make a master batch of uncolored fingerpaint. Fold the flour into the water and oil, while beating with an egg beater. If you don't beat with a mixer, you'll get lumps (which are fine but dry funny).  

 I saw this crazy cute idea to do a LOVE sign with the 'V' as little feet and the 'O' as a hand. I wish I could take credit for this idea but I can't (hat tip, Pinterest). I can take credit for the painting box however. We designed a cardboard painting shield to keep the floor clean during the painting process.

Color Variations

Burgundy

6 oz. Fingerpaint Paste

1/4 tsp Burgundy Oxide

1/8 tsp Electric Bubble Gum

Pink

6 oz. Fingerpaint Paste

1/4 tsp Electric Bubble Gum

1/2 tsp Pink Oxide

Red

6 oz. of Fingerpaint paste

Red Labcolor to preference

We tried dipping his Jamisen's feet in the paint to start with and that didn't work well. See below for visual proof of that; too much lumpy paint on the page did not allow for delicate footprints to show through. Also, he hated having paint on his feet. Despite showing him the photos and explaining the concept, he was not having any of it.

 

Then, we moved onto painting his feet with a paper towel dipped in the fingerpaint. Jackpot! Painting the color on worked way better.  

 The paper towel paint application worked much, much better because we were able to control the amount of paint we got onto the paper. Getting his handprint was also tricky but totally doable with the same paper towel technique. Bonus: this fingerpaint washes off so easily with water.

Notice I changed clothes for the painting project? I thought it would be way messier than it was! Neither Jamisen nor I ended up getting any paint on our clothes.

Adding the picture of Jamisen + Daddy at the bottom was potentially overkill of cute but too much cute is always appropriate in our house.

 Note: We threw all the excess fingerpaint away. We were worried about washing it down the sink, fearing it might turn to glue. =)