Salt Painting: Olympic Flags
What You'll Need
How We Did It
Let the glue dry for about 20 minutes. To speed up the process, you can set a blow-dryer to "warm" and blow-dry the picture outside. (Tip: The glue doesn't have to be completely dry before starting the next step.)
While we waited, the kids lugged out their exercise mat and proudly showed me the moves they've been practicing in their gymnastics and tumbling classes. 2024 Olympic hopefuls? ;)
Paint your flag! Wet your paintbrush in water, dip it in the watercolor, then let the brush gently touch the salt. Like magic, the color will climb up the crystals!
This was by far our favorite part of the project. We gleefully watched different colors "meet" and predicted what would happen when colors mixed. The kids discovered that touching the salt with a very wet paintbrush made colors travel farther than when using a slightly wet paintbrush. (Hint: Liquid watercolor will create more saturated colors than the regular watercolors; however, both work great!)
Let your creation dry. See it sparkle in the sunlight! (by G, age 3; she had a bit of grownup assistance drawing with the glue, but she did all the salting and painting herself!)
Since the salt will eventually crumble off the paper, I photographed the paintings and taped the pictures to cardboard tubes to make flags. That way, the kids can cheer each other on during sports games.
Go Team Kiwi Crate!
