Epsom Salt Painting

Epsom salt painting is a magical kids craft with a surprise ending. All you need for this art project is water, heavyweight watercolor paper, paintbrushes, food coloring and of course epsom salt. You can find epsom salt in the drug store near the alcohol and witch hazel. Start by heating up the water in the microwave until it boils. I used 1/2 cup of water to make 4 different paint colors. Then pour in an equal amount of epsom salt and stir until it is completely dissolved. Next, evenly distribute the water / salt solution into small containers to mix your paint. Add a few drops of food coloring in each container. We made red, yellow, blue and green paint.

Now let your child paint on the heavyweight paper. You definitely want to use heavyweight paper for this project. Thinner paper tears easily when saturated with water and will curl up when dry. And if your child is like mine, he or she will paint, paint, paint until that paper is soaking wet! Sophie covered every inch of it!

The paint will just look like regular watercolors when it first goes on the paper, but as it dries magic happens! The salt will crystalize and make a shiny, sparkly film over the painting that looks like ice. Don’t let your kids wander too far away if they want to see the action. It happens fairly quickly. You can already see the crystals starting to form in this first picture that was taken just a few minutes into the drying process,

Sophie was so excited to watch the “ice” crystals form!  Being a huge Frozen fan, as is every other girl on the planet right now, she instantly said, “Elsa froze my painting!”

Another totally mess free version of this craft is to dissolve the salt in the water but don’t add any food coloring. Then you can paint the salted water on black or purple paper and watch white “ice” crystals form. This is just as much fun for the kids and what mom doesn’t love a mess free art project?!

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