With the Kids

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts

We love Valentine’s Day in our family. What is better than a full day centered around LOVE? My calendar-loving seven-year-old is already counting down the days to Valentine’s Day. I guess she likes to plan ahead! Our first “official” Valentine crafts of the season are these colorful hearts made with puddles of watercolor. Not only is the finished product beautiful, the process is really fun, too! I think you’re going to love it.

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts

Supplies for Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts:

  • Sturdy paper (watercolor paper or card stock)
  • Liquid watercolors or washable tempera diluted with water
  • Droppers, pipettes, or paint brushes

Instructions:

This is a really simple activity, with lots of room for your child’s own ideas about how to do it.

Start by making puddles of paint on your paper heart. We only used 2 or 3 colors on each heart.

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts crafting

Then, holding your paper over a pan, start tipping the paper from side to side to create your paint tracks. The colors will mix as they run into each other, creating a unique design each time.

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts painting

This activity is definitely an art exploration – your kids can experiment with color mixing, different size paint puddles, and various ways to turn and tip the paper to make paint trails.

A few tips for success:

• Be prepared for a little mess – have a pan or dish tub ready to catch the paint as it rolls off the paper.

• Start with the primary colors (red, blue, yellow). You will get great color-mixing results, and avoid making all your hearts brown. Then, experiment with other color combinations – we tried warm colors, cool colors, and even made some muddy brown creations!

• It can be tricky to pick up the paper loaded with paint puddles, but using sturdy paper will help. We also had good success holding the paper over the pan and dripping our puddles there.

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts crafting steps

My girls got better and better at controlling the paint and getting it to move in all different directions across the paper. I had to keep cutting out hearts to keep up with them!

These puddle-painted hearts would make lovely Valentines. You could write a message on the back, or glue them to colored paper. I think they would look great taped in a window, or mounted as a group on black paper and framed. So many different ideas to try with these little paper hearts. Instant bright and happy art for February!

Happy painting!

Colorful Puddle-Painted Hearts finished

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8 comments

  1. My daycare lady does this, but with an old salad spinner that she picked up for super-cheap at a garage sale. The kids love picking out their paint colours and dripping them on, then the paper goes into the spinner and they spin it around. You get really cool designs!

  2. These are very pretty and I love the process used to make them! I may get brave and have my crew try this project. Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting. I really loved your date cards.

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