Magic Homemade Puffy Paint to Make a Snowman

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This is a last-minute winter craft I did with my 4-year old, Louis.

We’ve been browsing Hands On As We Grow lately, and something somewhere sparked the idea to paint a snowman. I’m not even sure what that would have been since we don’t have any painted snowmen on here yet. But we do have lots of winter crafts for toddlers!

Anyway, it sparked the idea to create white homemade puffy paint for the snowman. I looked up some recipes, but guess what… I didn’t have what they needed.

So I threw together some flour and salt and added just enough water to make it like mashed banana consistency.

Our craft paint (affiliate link) was already out, so I also squirted in a dab of white paint. But I didn’t have much, so that didn’t affect the mixtures much at all.

If I had more white paint, I would add more next time, since the flour has a brown hue to it.

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Then I gave it to Louis to paint!

(Just wait… the puffy part comes in a bit.)

First, I made a snowman to show him how to make the circles and fill each one in.

Also, this homemade puffy paint needs to be dabbed on more than spread around. It needs to be thick to work well!

Once the snowman was created, Louis stuck it in the microwave for 30 seconds and then…

… oh the excitement! How did it turn out?!

We took it out and it was puffed up!

If we had used a self-rising flour, it would have been even puffier. But this has a cool effect and the paint now felt rubbery.

Also, the thicker we painted, the puffier it got!

Then it was time to add details to our homemade puffy paint snowman!

We decided to just use markers instead of paint, but either would work.

We’ve been grabbing our markers a lot lately. We bought this 100-pack of markers (affiliate link) around Christmas-time and has been used almost daily since.

Here are 30 fine motor activities for toddlers to help with their drawing skills!

Marker tip: Every time we get them out, I ask my boys what the rule is for markers. They are 1) to only get one out at a time, 2) to put the lid back on and 3) to put it back in the box where you got it.

I cannot tell you how many boxes of markers we’ve been through in this house, rules needed to be enforced!

I had fun decorating my own snowman made with our simple homemade puffy paint alongside Louis.

The puffy paint has a real rubbery textures that makes it hard to put on good details. Even Louis noticed the texture which was a cool sensory-learning bonus.

He had a lot of fun adding in his snowman details. He’s pretty proud of the legs he put on it, and went on to add them onto my snowman as well.

Do your kids love experimenting with new ways to paint?

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