Make your own spice paints

Make your own spice paints and arouse your kids senses as they take their paintings to a whole new level.

Spice paints are easy to make using shop bought or homemade paints as the base.

A fun sensory play activity and a good way to use up old herbs and spices from your pantry.
 

What you’ll need

 

• Pots of different coloured watercolour paints or poster paints

 

• A range of different ground herbs & spices

 

• Teaspoons for stirring

 

• Paper or card

 

• Paint brushes

 

How to make your spice paints

For this homemade paint recipe all you need to do is mix your herbs or spices into your watercolours or poster paints – as easy as that!

1. Choose one herb or spice and add a teaspoonful to the first pot of paint.

2. Repeat adding each of your herbs or spices to a different pot of paint.

3. Mix each pot of paint thoroughly and you’re ready to paint!
 

Herb & spice suggestions

You can mix any combination of paints and herbs or spices, but if you want to keep things ‘matching’ you could try adding:
 

• cinnamon or nutmeg to brown paint

 

• ginger or smoked paprika to orange paint

 

• vanilla to white paint

 

• turmeric, garam masala or curry powder to yellow paint

 

• mild chilli powder to red paint

 

• mint, basil or orgenano to green paint

 

Tips

 

• Start by adding a teaspoon of each herb or spice to the paint, then slowly add more to get the aroma you want. How much you use depends on how strong you would like the fragrance to be.

 

• If the paints start to become too thick with the herbs or spices, add a few drops of water to loosen the paints.

 

• For something different why not try adding loose herbal teas to the paints too.

 

• Just ensure that none of the seasonings or spices are too hot or spicy in case your little one just has to taste them.

 

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