Today we were revisiting the classic kids painting technique of butterfly prints. But this one is too good not to keep coming back to. Because the outcome is a bit random it means there is no pressure to do beautiful painting so wee ones can enjoy the process and the surprise of what they get.
It’s really easy, you will probably remember it from when you were small too!
You need:
- Any kind of paper you can find. We used newspaper and some bigger sugar paper. Thicker paper is better so the paint doesn’t tear it but we are not being fussy at the moment.
- Kid safe water-based paint – or this on works great with the homemade flour paint from our previous post which you can find here)
- Something to cover the table or floor
You just need to let wee ones blob paint onto the paper nice and thickly. They can move it about with a brush if they like but it’s not necessary. Then help them to fold the paper in half and show them how to gently rub over it to transfer the paint. Then help them to open it out and look at your beautiful butterfly print.
When I was little I used to then add a body and head to turn them into butterflies. My children were a bit more ambitious and wanted me to cut out different shapes for them to print. We started simple with hearts, then fish, then increasingly complicated sea animals. By the time we got to requests for dragons I was struggling to keep up but we did our best and the patterns look great. See what you can come up with together.
