Painted Clay Butterfly Craft

Last month we started experimenting with liquid watercolors and let me tell you, I am in love! The colors are truly gorgeous and my children love creating works of art. We even turned some of their beautiful watercolor paintings into an alphabet chart. This week we explored creating homemade white clay butterflies and hearts and painting them with liquid watercolors. I’m in love with our Painted Clay Butterfly Craft!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED FOR YOUR PAINTED CLAY BUTTERFLY CRAFT

white clay recipe (1 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup cornstarch, 3/4 cup warm water)
cookie tray
parchment paper
liquid watercolors

AREAS OF DEVELOPMENT

fine motor development
creativity
artistic expression
color exploration

HOW TO MAKE THE PAINTED CLAY BUTTERFLY CRAFT

Begin by making the white clay. In a medium pot stir together the baking soda, clay and water. Cook on the stove stirring constantly until the mixture forms a bowl.
Roll the baking soda clay out on a floured surface making it approximately 1/4 inch thick. Cut out butterflies and hearts (or whatever shape you want) using the cookie cutters. Using a spatula carefully transfer the hearts to a cookie tray covered with parchment paper. Bake at 200 degrees F (100 degrees C) for approximately 1 hour. I flipped mine over after 45 minutes to make sure the underside cooked.

Once cool set up a painting station for your children. Each child receives cups with small amounts of red, yellow and blue liquid watercolors (I used about 10 drops of watercolor to 1/4 cup water), individual paintbrushes and the clay butterflies and hearts.

Give your children the freedom to explore the watercolors. My kids really enjoyed the new painting surface. The watercolors slightly soak into the clay creating gorgeous vibrant colors. By using red, yellow and blue my children could naturally explore color mixing.

I love how they turned out! I was initially thinking we would attach a ribbon to the back and hang them, but my children love using them as an accessory in our block area with our unit blocks.