Our little nugget loves to paint. She spent almost all of this past Thanksgiving holiday painting with her Grandma…it was all she wanted to do! When she was younger, we used a lot of washable paints (be it finger-paint or otherwise). As she’s grown, we’ve branched out a bit and tried a few other types of paint (acrylic and tempura), but in the past few months we’ve come to love painting with watercolors. The colors are so vibrant and beautiful, and we just love how they bleed together so magically. I had been looking for different watercolor painting ideas that we could try, and low and behold, I came across several Instagram posts of people creating Watercolor Salt Paintings!
Who would have thought that combining a little bit of glue (on a piece of paper) with a little bit of salt, would make such a beautiful canvas? To be honest…creating the glue and salt designs on the paper is half the fun, and the result is beautiful in and of itself!
Watercolor Salt Painting
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Supplies:
- Black Paper/Cardstock
- Glue (We used Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue)
- Salt
- Watercolors (We made our own by mixing water with these Gourmet Liqua-Gel Food Colors)
- Fine-Tipped Paint Brush
Instructions:
- Using the glue, start creating your design(s) of choice on the black paper/cardstock.
- Before the glue sets, sprinkle an adequate amount of salt on top of all of the glue designs. Make sure that every bit of glue is covered with salt.
- Shake the excess salt off over the kitchen sink, or trash receptacle.
- Set aside to dry completely.
- Once the glue has dried, grab your watercolors and paintbrush.
- Gently apply the watercolors to the salt designs. We found that you need a light touch on the salt. If you use the paintbrush as you normally would, you will likely remove all of the salt from the paper, and the watercolors will have nothing to stick to. To color the salt, it works better if you gently apply small drops of watercolor paint to the salt.
- Continue applying the watercolors until all of the salt has been painted (or feel free to leave some of it white for creative purposes). When you are satisfied with your painting, set it aside to dry completely.
We love discovering different painting ideas and techniques, and I’m sure that there will be more watercolor salt paintings in our future! We don’t paint on black paper very often, and the glue and salt provide a whole other textural element to the project. It’s good to switch things up every now and then!
If you’re looking for another unique painting idea…make sure to check out our Bubble Wrap Paintings!
