Frighteningly Good Finger Painting

Since I'm on maternity leave, Vivian is obviously not going to preschool. Hartford City is 30 minutes away, and we are not paying for gas to drive her there and back each week. So, we have had to get creative around here to keep her occupied and involved.

Today I branched out into unknown territory: Finger Paints. The phrase scares me, but then I thought about it a little more, and figured our house is pretty much destroyed half the time anyway, so what more is some paint?

I remember being a little girl and staying at Grandma Oyler's over the summer, and finger painting was one of the fun things we did together. She is a crafty lady and I always liked to do that sort of thing with her.

I looked around on the internet to find a recipe for homemade finger paint, since I don't keep those types of items just lying around. Here is what we found:

Homemade Finger Paint


1 cup cornstarch

4 tablespoons sugar

4 cups cold water

1/2 cup clear liquid dish soap

food coloring

plastic containers with lids

In a saucepan, whisk together the cornstarch, sugar, and cold water. Over medium low heat, cook and stir until thickened and slightly bubbly.

Remove from heat and stir in dish soap.

Let cool 30 minutes.

Divide paint into plastic containers and add food coloring to each container as desired.


So far so good with the recipe. At first I was like, "Dish soap? What?" but I guess it's good to make it easy to clean up. Whatever. Vivian pulled a chair up next to me by the stove while I made the paint. I had to stir it pretty much constantly for a good 10 minutes to make sure it thickened up correctly. Viv had her own saucepan and whisk to 'pretend' stir her own mixture.

Anyway, the finger paints turned out ok. They looked like frosting for sugar cookies to me, however, the dish soap ingredient served as a deterrent so I wouldn't eat them. :)

We made painted a spooky house and a big jack-o-lantern. Vivian seemed to really enjoy herself. We put lids on the leftover paint and stuck it in the fridge. I guess it keeps for about 3 weeks, so we will be painting again here soon.