DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Spatter Painting

Thanks to Lucy for sharing this idea with us!

Materials:

• Wire Window screening about letter size attached to something to keep it stable on all 4 sides (I used old slats from lattice fencing and 1 of these for each color of paint used) 
• boxes large enough to hold the next item on this list (A dress box or shirt box works well when reinforced by placing it in its cover)
• an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper (construction works ok but tempera paint paper is better)
• tempera paints thinned out some.
• an old toothbrush
• flat objects to use as silhouette forms (i.e. leaves, cutouts of objects like stars, shapes, any thing you can think of.  If you know someone that can do a silhouettes of the child's face that is great fun for the kids.)
• straight pins

Set Up:

• Pin your silhouette items to your paper and put it into the box
• Place the wire screen over the box
• Put thinned paints in shallow containers
• jar of water to rinse toothbrush for change of color

Action:

Children will dip the toothbrush into the paint and brush it over the screen, spattering the paint through it and onto the picture below. When the pictures are removed and allowed to dry, remove the pinned on objects and you have a wonderful picture surrounded by spattered paint.

The kids love to do this in the winter time with cut out snow flakes. They end up with a spattered silhouette of snowflakes and colored snow flakes too!

Print friendly version of these instructions.