Body Paint Process Art

Sometimes, you just need to do something a little crazy. Not belly piercing or dye your hair red crazy (shout out to my freshman year of college), but wild and toddler crazy.

And that’s how I ended up tracing my children on the floor of our great room.

Are you game to try this body paint activity?

I admit it was a little crazy a thought but once we had finished breakfast and the ho-hum moments of the morning began, I thought “we’ve gotta spice today up.”

So I started gathering the supplies much to my kids’ delight.

From the moment we started, they were hooked!

Who wouldn’t be totally intrigued by an activity like this so my kids were amazing during the 2 minute set up.

It didn’t take long and suddenly, we were ready to body paint.

You won’t believe how easy this was to set up

Having the right materials on hand for an activity like this is key. I love having these supplies around just for a day like today.

Materials
(this list contains affiliate links)

• Paint (we love this washable tempera)
• Kraft paper
• Painter’s tape
• Large sharpie marker
• No-spill paint containers

You’ll want these tips to make things go smoothly

Explaining to my kids that I needed them to lay down to be traced was a riot. They weren’t sure what Mom was up to but they knew it must be good.

I started by tracing my son (3.5 years) with pencil. I quickly discovered with all the wiggling that my paper needed to be really taped to the floor, not just the corners.

Little sister (25 months) did great too after watching Big Brother Best Friend have his tracing turn. She managed to stay reasonably still.

A quick pause for the kids while I traced their outlines with a giant sharpie marker and then we were ready to paint.

Can you believe I did this activity just feet away from my white couch?

Once we had the bodies traced, we did a quick anatomy check and admired how big everyone was getting. But it was time to paint – no time for chit chat mom!

The kids were stoked about getting to paint their “bodies” and I was pretty excited to watch this play out.

• I made sure to use washable paint (duh).
• And to put it in no-spill containers to avoid tipping.
• And followed all the tips from this article on painting with toddlers.

In a perfect world where I wasn’t taking photos and blogging about this activity for the world to see, my kids definitely would have been naked or close to it. Even still, they didn’t get much on their clothing but I was (admittedly) a nervous wreck the whole time.

I could have watched them paint this all day. The differences between my 3.5 year old’s painting skills and his 2 year old sister was really cool to observe. Love seeing their development side by side.

Just for fun, I carried the painted people to the garage to dry overnight. Then I cut them out so we could display them for a wee bit. It’s been fun to have these Paint People watching over us and not at all creepy…

But what about the white couch? What about the floor?

The kids did a great job keeping the paint on the paper – it’s such a large surface to work with, they didn’t need to go crazy.

I kept a wash cloth handy to wipe up drips and toddler hands as messes occured. It was actually one of my least messy painting activities every.

We will definitely be doing this body paint activity again – probably in the summer. I can just see the fun of doing this outside. Since my kids aren’t really ready for rebellious red hair or piercings, indoor painting like this is a big enough wild adventure for us all.

Think you’ll try body paint process art at your house?