Homemade Watercolour Paints (2024)

ThisHOMEMADE PAINT is made with cornstarch, baking soda, corn syrup and vinegar, and costs just pennies to make. It’s a wonderful and inexpensive paint for toddlers and preschoolers. The paints dry into solid watercolour paint pucks that will last indefinitely. Just swipe a wet paintbrush over them to make art.

How to Make Homemade Watercolour Paint for Kids

Today I’m sharing our awesome recipe for homemade watercolour paints. These DIY paints are terrific for toddlers and preschoolers. They cost just pennies to make, they work great, and you can store them indefinitely. In the past, we’ve made homemade liquid watercolours from our dried out markers, so be sure to check those out as well.

Why make homemade paint?

Making homemade paint is a great way to save money if you have kids who love to paint and who go through paint quickly. The hooligans love a good art project, and they love using those little trays of watercolour paints. I always loved them when I was a child too.

Now, I don’t know about your kids, but the hooligans can blow through a tray of those store-bought watercolours in a matter of minutes.

They never last long because the paint trays are so tiny, and the colours get all mixed together as the kids drag their brushes through them.

Well, I’ve found an awesome, inexpensive solution to that problem.

I make homemade watercolour paint disks for my daycare children.

Similar to IKEA paint pucks

These paints are similar to the hard paint pucks you find at Ikea. You just swish a wet brush over the disc of paint, and the colours come alive.

Colours won’t get muddy

These paint colours don’t get mixed up like they do in a small tray of watercolours because the wells in the muffin tin are deep enough and far enough apart to prevent the paints from running together. They last much longer too.

It should be mentioned that these paints are not archival quality by any means, but they’re perfect for toddlers and preschoolers who like to paint.

Watch how to make them in this short video:

Homemade Watercolour Paint Recipe:

You can get the printable instructions at the bottom of this post!

The photos that you see in this post are a double batch.

Ingredients and supplies:

• 4 tbsp baking soda (bicarbonate soda)
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 1/2 tsp Light Corn Syrup(you can also use Karo syrup or golden corn syrup)
• 2 tbsp cornstarch (known as corn flour in the UK)
• Food colouring(icing gels produce the most intense colours)
• Mini Muffin Tinor ice cube tray

Doubling the Recipe:

This recipe doubles easily. I made a double batch and it half-filled all 12 compartments of my mini muffin tin.

Making your Paint:

Mix the baking soda and vinegar together in a spouted container (hello science experiment) and wait for the fizzing to stop. I use a 2 cup measuring cup for this.

Add the corn syrup and cornstarch, and mix well until the cornstarch has dissolved.

Pour into your containers.

Your mixture will be VERY thick. Cornstarch, when mixed with liquid becomes a Non-Newtonian substance (think oobleck) which acts like both a solid and a liquid. The trick to keeping it in liquid form, so you can pour it, is to keep stirring it. As soon as you stop stirring, it will settle back into a solid. If that happens, just dig back in with a spoon, and get it moving again, and it will revert back into liquid form.

Now, grab your colours and have some fun!

Stir your colour in with a toothpick or popsicle stick and mix well.

We used Wilton Icing Gels to colour all but two of our paints; for the red and yellow, we used liquid food colour.

For the liquid food colouring, we added 6 drops to get the intense colour we were looking for. An added pinch of cornstarch helped compensate for the extra liquid.

Let your paints set

Now the hard part: waiting.

Your watercolour paints have to dry completely. This could take a couple of days if your environment is cool and damp.

We left our paints beside our gas fireplace, and they were dry in less than 24 hours.

Let’s Paint!

When your watercolours are dry, simply grab a paint brush and some water and test them out!

I was so impressed with how our homemade watercolour paints worked!

The paints glide on smoothly, the colours look super. They’re nicer than any dollar store watercolours we’ve ever used. They’re a little chalky when they dry, but not as bad dollar store paints that we’ve been using recently.

The wells of the muffin tin are better than the shallow trays that kids’ watercolours usually come in. Our paints stay much cleaner because the colours won’t slosh together every time a child swirls a brush around in them.

How to store your homemade watercolour paints:

Thesehomemade watercolour paints will store indefinitely because there’s nothing in them that can spoil.

When you’re finished painting, simply store the paint tin uncovered, and the water will evaporate, leaving your paint discs in perfect condition for your next art session.

Do homemade watercolour paints stain?

This post has been edited to add that our homemade watercolour paints have never stained our clothes or hands.

If, however you prefer to protect your child’s clothing when crafting, have a peek at these adorable Repurposed Denim Apronsthat I make from the pant-legs of our old jeans!

Boredom Busters for Kids!

Print off our checklist of 100 Fun Things for Kids to Do at Home. Stick it on your fridge, and they’ll never be bored again!

You may also like our:

• Homemade Puffy Paint
• Homemade Liquid Watercolours
• Homemade Chalk Paint

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