How to Make Spicy Scented Sensory Paint

This month I joined in on a huge Paint-a-Thon challenge with other kid bloggers. Our task was to create an original painting idea for kids and I think Onetime and I did it!

Onetime had so much fun when we used spices to do some open-ended art and math last month, that when I suggested we try to make paint out of spices, he said “This is going to be SO COOL!!!” And it was!

Check out our creation today and find the instructions to make your own awesome spicy scented sensory paint!

Supplies

You will need:

A variety of different coloured spices from your kitchen
Some thick paper (cardstock) or a canvas to paint on
A mixing tray
1 egg for each colour of paint
Paintbrushes

Making the Paint

To start, Onetime and I opened up a bunch of spices from our kitchen cupboard and just looked at the colours.

We wanted to do some Autumn themed painting – so we chose nutmeg to make brown paint (for tree trunks), paprika for red leaves, ginger for yellow leaves, and chili powder for reddish-orange leaves.

To make the paint, we took the yolk only from 4 eggs (saving the whites for some healthy omelettes!) and mixed each with about a tablespoon of spice.

Just so you know – I didn’t come up with this recipe by myself.

I found it in a really old craft book that I dug out of my basement, where it suggested you could mix different colours of mud with egg yolks to make interesting earthy paint! (We’ll have to try that another time…)

Painting With Spices

The paints ended up having a really interesting texture – somewhat grainy. Although we used paintbrushes, this recipe would make a really interesting tactile fingerpaint too if your child wanted.

Of course the paint smelled wonderful!

The colours turned out really intense too – and they worked perfectly for autumn trees!The cool thing about spiced paint is that if you look at the picture below, you will see that the paint dries somewhat three-dimensional and has a slightly shiny look to it. Really neat!

Oh, and we’ve had our paintings for a few weeks now and they don’t smell like rotten egg yet – just in case you were wondering! In fact, I think that egg yolks may have been used in some of the earliest paints…do you know?I hope you give this project a try – Onetime enjoyed himself and I did too!