Christmas salt painting is such a fun and easy holiday craft for kids. Watch in awe as the paint spreads like magic across the Christmas tree and star shapes!
Print our FREE Christmas tree and star templates. Find the links in the materials list above, or get more details below the tutorial.
Cut out your shape.
Trace the shape onto a piece of watercolour paper. (We cut our paper in half so it was 6 x 9 inches.)
Step 3: Mix the paint and add glue and salt to the paper
Add water and liquid watercolour paint to small bowls, or to sections of a paint palette.The amount of paint to water will depend on how vibrant you'd like your colours to be. We added about 10 drops of paint per Tablespoon of water.
Carefully squeeze glue out of the bottle to trace the shape drawn on the paper. Using a small bottle of glue, like a 4 ounce size, will make this step easier. The tip on the smaller bottles is also smaller, which will make it easier to control how much glue comes out and where it ends up.
Then add dots of glue in the center of the tree. These will be the Christmas tree's ornaments.
Add a generous amount of salt on top of the glue, making sure all of the glue is covered.
Tip the paper to remove the extra salt.Don't tap or shake the paper too much -- it could make too much salt come off or even cause the glue to flatten.
Step 4: Add paint to the raised salt lines
Stir the paint with a paintbrush and then pick up some paint on your brush.
Bring the brush over to the salt-covered glue and lightly set the brush down on the salt. Allow the paint to spread, like magic, across the salt.
Continue going around the outline of the tree, adding a little bit of paint at a time.
Once the tree outline is complete, clean your brush and use a different colour for the round ornaments.
Add different colours of paint onto the small dots and watch the paint spread.
Your Christmas salt painting is complete!
Allow your picture to dry before handling it. It can take a day or two for the glue to dry completely.This is what the watercolor salt art looks like once it's dry. You can see that the colour has faded and the salt is more crystalized looking, almost like ice.