(Mis)Adventures in Finger Paint

Today I was able to complete the finger painting craft project I'd been wanting to do with the babies.  I had several goals for the project:  1. The paint must be safe for the babies, particularly since the babies still put everything in their mouths.  2. The paint couldn't be made of egg, pudding, or milk since I wanted to keep the artwork once it was completed.  3.  Create something as a memento of the babies at 1 year old.

I used Version One of the Basic Finger Paint recipe from this website.  It only has 3 ingredients: Corn Starch, Water, and Food Coloring.  Super easy to make.  Just mix 1/2 cup of corn starch with 2 cups of water, warm in a sauce pan until it thickens.  Separate in individual containers and let cool.  Once the mixture has cooled, add the food coloring.  Here are a couple of pictures of these steps:

These little containers were sealable and I made them on Tuesday night and just unsealed them this afternoon.  Today before we started painting, I took a minute to prep our work area.  I covered the babies' high chairs with a trash bag and then I used painter's tape to tape the paper to their tray so it wouldn't slide around.  Exhibit A:

Next, I picked two colors for each baby to paint with.  For Brady it was Blue and Green:

This is his finished product:

And here is Chloe's (her two colors were Purple and Pink):

I was really happy with how they turned out, my only complaint was that the food coloring temporarily stained the babies' hands.  Chloe's hands were hardly stained at all, for whatever reason the pink and purple weren't as prone to staining.  The blue and green were pretty noticeable on Brady's hands.  I learned that washing the hands with white vinegar and cool water helps to get the food color stains to go away.  The sooner you wash their hands the better.  

Here is Brady's "Green" hand:

Here is Brady's "Blue" hand:

His expression in that photo seems to be like, "So my hand is a little blue, who cares?"  

By the end of the night and after their baths, you couldn't see any of the food coloring stains left on their hands, so I was very glad about that!  Overall, it was a fun project and I am thinking I will frame their works of art to hang in the nursery!