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Painting with your baby? Is that even possible? Believe it or not, there is actually a way for your baby to paint without any mess. I came up with this idea when I heard about how lots of people were painting with their dogs. A couple years ago people were putting paper and paint in a Ziploc bag and covering the bag in peanut butter. Then they were having their dog lick off the peanut butter which spread the paint all around. I adapted this idea to let my baby paint a cute nameplate mess-free.
My daughter was a baby when I first heard about this dog painting trick. As soon as I read about it, I wanted to adapt it for my daughter and take out the peanut butter and licking. We had fun, but at the end I had a piece of paper that was only special because my daughter had unknowingly painted it. She is now a toddler and loves painting for real.
I wanted to try it again with my son, but this time make something better. I came up with the idea of making a fun name painting. In reality I made two. One that says “baby” for the sake of his anonymity on this blog and one with his actual name. They were so simple and fun to make.
How to Paint With Your Baby
Supplies:
- One piece white cardstock
- Printer (optional)
- Paper cutter (optional)
- Scissors
- X-ACTO knife
- Ziploc bag
- Paint
- Plastic tablecloth (optional)
- One piece colored cardstock
- Glue
Setup:
There were a few things I needed to do before getting my baby involved. To begin, I made a pattern for my baby’s name. My handwriting is awful, so I used Microsoft Word wordart. For the sake of this blog I typed in “BABY” and blew it up as big as I could which ended up being size 250 font. Then I went to the align menu and aligned it to both center and middle. After printing it, I cut 1.25 inches off the top and bottom to make a square with the name in the middle. If you have good handwriting, you can just write the name yourself.
Then I took an X-ACTO knife and a pair of scissors and cut out the printed name. I found it easiest to cut an opening along the longest side of each letter with the X-ACTO knife and then go from there with the scissors.
Since the B’s and the A had middle pieces, I took a strip of paper and used sticky tack to temporarily attach it along the back of the cut out letters. I then used more sticky tack to attach the little pieces to the temporary paper strip. If your baby’s name doesn’t have any letters with unattached middle pieces, you can skip this step.
Creating:
Now I was ready for my baby. Once he was awake and ready to paint, I took the paper I had prepped and squirted a whole bunch of paint all over it. Then I very carefully placed it in a plastic bag and made sure to seal it very well.
Then I gave my baby the bag. Besides keeping it from his mouth he got to “paint” however he wanted. He crinkled it, scrunched it, played peekaboo with it, and kicked it. Some of the time he was laying on his tummy and some of the time he sat up. If your baby loves crinkling this paper as they paint, learn how to make them a crinkly fabric square that they can play with anytime.
When all the paint was spread out, it was done. I took the wet paint paper out as carefully as I could and put it on a plastic tablecloth. I ended up tearing the side seam of the bag to make it easier. Then I took off the temporary back paper strip and carefully peeled off the small pieces. Then I left it in the sun to dry. You don’t want to leave it in the bag for too long or it will start to dry and stick to the bag.
Once it was dry, it was time to put it all together. I took the piece of colored cardstock and cut 2.5 inches off one end to make it a square as well. Then I glued my baby’s masterpiece on the colored cardstock. The painted paper was pretty rumpled so I stuck it under a bunch of heavy cookbooks to make it flatten out.
There was no mess on my painter baby and besides a little paint on my hands there was no mess at all. I loved how it turned out. Have fun painting with your own baby artist.
