Puffy Paint

Objectives

• Create textured artwork using glue-based ‘puffy paint’.

• Observe any differences between the wet and dry artwork.

Materials

• Per Group:
  tempera paint
  white glue
  plastic squeeze bottles (available from baking supply or hobby stores)
  paper

Key Questions

• How is the puffy paint different from regular paint?
• How is puffy paint different from glue?

What To Do

Preparation

Add white glue to tempera paint. Make several different colours, putting each in a squeeze bottle.

Activity

1. Squeeze your glue-paint mixture onto paper to make a picture.
2. Look for any changes while the paint dries.

Extensions

• Try using different ingredients in place of the glue, e.g. corn syrup, flour, cornstarch, glycerine, coffee or shaving cream.Try adding colour in different ways: Kool-Aid, food colouring, powdered paint and watercolour ink are some ideas to try instead of tempera paint.If you have access to a microwave, here is a very cool puffy paint experiment from Steve Spangler Science that uses salt and self-rising flour.