Salt Painting Craft

May 1, 2023

This is a fun and easy way to create a beautiful raised painting effect on paper.

All you need is:

Table salt
Liquid glue
Paper (thick paper or cardstock works best)
Food colouring or watercolour paints
Syringe and/or paint brushes

Instructions

1.

1. Draw out a simple design with a pencil on your paper. You can use stencils for this, trace another design, have your child write out their name, or whatever you like.

2.

Outline your shapes in glue.

4.

Mix a few tablespoons of water in a container with your choice of food colouring to make your watercolor paint. Or, use a watercolour paint set and just be sure to make the paint extra thin/watery.

5.

If you have an old eye dropper or kids medicine syringe, use it to gather up your coloured water and drip it onto the salt. If you don’t have one of these, you can use a paintbrush instead.

6.

Try not to drench your salt pattern, but rather watch the salt soak up one droplet of color at a time.

Let your creation dry overnight.

What can your child learn from this activity?

Besides being a beautiful and interesting art technique, this is also a great opportunity to learn a little bit of science.

Salt is a useful product that has the ability to absorb moisture from its environment. Its ability to absorb water is what makes salt a good preservative. Something that can absorb water or moisture from the air is called “hygroscopic”.

Another experiment you can try is using sugar instead of salt for salt painting.

Find out if sugar is hygroscopic like salt. Try this with salt and sugar for a fun science experiment, and compare the results!