Huge thanks to Robert Mahar for introducing me to the idea of homemade watercolor paints… Like… Months ago. I saw him post a tutorial on Instagram ages ago, and I was like WHAAAAAT!

I never got a chance to try it, and then I kind of forgot about it.

This week, I’m working on a fairly important illustration project – the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search. With the current client workload, and littles in the office, the only time I’ve been able to work on my entry for this year’s contest is from about 10pm to midnight. Like every night. The other day, I was like, “but I don’t wanna be up til midnight again!”

So I asked Phil if he wanted to have a painting party after work, knowing full well his answer would be an enthusiastic yes before I even finish the sentence.

The only problem was, he was out of his favorite Crayola watercolor paints. I remembered my buddy Robert’s post about making them at home, and a quick Google search brought up a bunch of recipes. Here’s how we made ours!

Make Your Own Watercolors

You’ll need:

• 4 tablespoons of baking soda
• 2 tablespoons of white vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon of corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons of corn starch
• food coloring
• toothpicks
• measuring cup
• mini muffin pan

What to do:

1. Let your toddler pour baking soda in the measuring cup. Ask what he or she thinks will happen when they add the vinegar. (Spoiler alert, it’s AWESOME.)
2. Add the vinegar, go nuts, let the fizzing settle down.
3. Add the corn syrup and corn starch, and mix everything together. It should have kind of a glue-like consistency. Still a liquid, but not super runny. If it’s really runny, add a tad more corn starch. If it’s too solid, add a tad more vinegar.
4. Pour the mixture into your mini muffin pan. You can fill a bunch of the sections just a tiny bit of the way, or go nuts and fill em almost all the way. We did the latter, and ended up making a second batch of the stuff so we’d end up with 10 colors.
5. Add the food coloring to each section to make whatever color you want, mixing it in with a toothpick til the color is pretty uniform throughout. A little goes a long way, we used just 1-2 drops in each. For ones where we were mixing colors, and we only wanted a tiny bit of, say, red, we’d stick the end of the toothpick into the food coloring so there was just the tiniest hint of it being mixed in.
6. Let em dry. It’ll take 1-2 days for everything to compeletey dry out, but then go nuts painting!

This was a seriously fun and engaging activity for Phil, and I’m pretty sure we’re gonna go this route for paint in the future. I’d love to find a muffin pan that has some kind of lid on it that could be just for his watercolors…

Oh and bonus? Totally non-toxic, since it’s made with food items from the kitchen.

The only problem was the waiting time… which I dealt with by letting Phil use my Koi watercolors for our painting party afterwards.

That’s right, we used an ice cube tray for mixing paints…

Don’t tell Josh.

Fun Fact: I’ve been using this painty soup can to hold rinse water for brushes when I’m painting for a full 20 years now. I’ve had it since high school.

I am wildly sentimental about strange things.

Here’s a little sneak peek of my Global Talent Search entry – so many miles to go before I sleep. I can’t wait to see how the finished piece turns out!

We had such a blasty with our painting party that night… and we totally destroyed the dining room in the process. I think I was still scrubbing up watercolors off the table around 11pm or so.

And then, yesterday was the big day! The watercolor paints we made ourselves were totally dry and ready for a test run!

Phil used his homemade watercolors for about 5 minutes of excited “I HAVE TO TRY EVERY COLOR!!!” craziness, and then he was ready to move on to something else.

But still, we had fun.

Have you tried to make your own watercolors?

How did it work out for you – do you have any tips or tricks to share in the comments?