17 Feb How to Create a Glittering Crystallized Watercolor Painting

Clark and Luci love painting.  So how do I make it even more special and exciting?  Add a little glitter, of course!  While working on our art project today, we added a couple of extra ingredients to create glittering, crystallized watercolor paints.  Everything’s better with glitter, right?

Well, unless you’re the one who’s cleaning it up.

We found a super-easy way to make watercolor paints crystallize and shine in the light!  This is so cool and so simple!  There’s no need to go out and buy anything – we made it with ingredients from around the house!

Here’s what you will need:

• 1 tablespoon of Epsom Salts
• A couple pinches of Salt
• 1 tablespoon of Water
• Food Coloring

Put all of the ingredients in a little container – an ice tray would be perfect, if you have an extra one hanging around.  Then gently swish it around to dissolve the Epsom salts and table salt.  If there’s a little left (we may have gotten over-zealous with the table salt), it’s no big deal – it may even add to the effect.

We have been reading the book Very Last First Time, which takes place in Ungava Bay in Canada, for our Five in a Row curriculum. To go along with this, I thought it would be fun to paint a scene from Northern Canada.  Watercolors seemed the perfect medium to paint the aurora borealis, which we had learned a little bit about.  I also came across this blog, That Artist Woman, who had created a really beautiful scene with polar bears.  This fit perfectly with our project.

The night before, I cut out a couple of stencils.  I found the silhouettes online, printed them off and cut them out.

Using some watercolor paper, we painted our aurora borealis.  We had watched a few videos of them, since we don’t get to see them this far south.  Clark painted them as we had seen them, waving and flowing across the sky.

We left the bottom part of the page white, unpainted.  Once the sky was dry we planned to add snow drifts and polar bears.  As we let the paint dry, we watched as more and more “crystals” began to form.  It took several hours to dry, since we were liberal with the watercolors, but once the paintings were dry, the crystals were absolutely beautiful!  It’s difficult to capture the glitter effect on camera because it’s constantly changing – you’ll have to try it yourself!

We waiting until the next day to finish our painting.  Using the cut-out stencils I had made earlier, we painted in our polar bears using white tempura paint.  A word of advice – I don’t think I would use the tempura paint again as it wanted to mix with the watercolors under it.  I think a good quality acrylic paint may have been a better option.

We painted in the Mama polar bear and added a baby with her.  Then we painted in the snow drifts, using lots of paint to create texture.

I think our pictures turned out beautifully!  Now we can experiment with different colors in the sky and silhouettes for the animals!  The options are endless!  Clark comes alive with art.  I love to watch him.  As we painted we were talking and Clark declares “When I grow up I want to draw!”  ❤

Don’t miss the rest of our adventures and activities with Five in A Row:  Very Last First Time!