Toddler art: painting a hand print rainbow

Little Miss loves getting her hands on paint – quite literally! I must admit, I’m not always a huge fan of messy activities but I do try and put that to one side and indulge her artistic urges once or twice a week. Sometimes the results are better than others but her latest effort turned out particularly well so I thought I’d share it. We like it so much we’ve actually framed it and put it up in the living room! I’ve titled this slightly abstract piece Hand Print Rainbow, for reasons that I hope are fairly obvious to not just her ridiculously proud parents! Read on to find out how we did it and our toddler art essentials.

Making a rainbow…

I can’t say that she didn’t have a little bit of help but much of this painting session’s success came about purely by chance. I’d basically squirted three blobs of paint – red, blue and yellow – onto a piece of paper and had been encouraging Little Miss to make hand prints with it, which she was, of course, more than happy to do. Before I knew it I realised the three colours together were creating a nice rainbow effect, so then I helped Little Miss spread the prints out into a bit of an arc and voilà!

My toddler art essentials…

Our favourite toddler-friendly paints

Essential non-spill paint pots

The ideal mat for catching both food and paint!

I have discovered a few essentials for painting which make it much easier not to worry so much about the mess. My top find has to be Crayola Beginnings Washable Finger Paints. They come as a pack of three primary colours in handy, non-spill, squeezy bottles. And best of all, the paint is really easy to wipe or wash off skin, surfaces and clothes, just as the blurb promised! In fact I’ve been pretty amazed at just how easy it is to clean up afterwards and even the bright blue paint washed out of a top without leaving any tell-tale traces. We got ours for £5.99 from Sainsbury’s, which is perhaps a bit more expensive than some of the other paints you can get, but I think it’s worth it. And they’re currently on offer for £4.50 on the Hobbycraft website

My other essentials are non-spill pots (we found ours in Tesco), chunky toddler-friendly brushes, a long-sleeved wipe-clean bib and our trusty circular Prince Lionheart Catch All Floor Mat, which we’ve used since we started weaning. So far this kit has protected us – and our cream living room carpet – from the worst paint-related excesses!

If you want a quicker, easier and even cleaner artistic activity, my other recent discovery, via my mum, has been magic painting books. I remembered these fondly from when I was a kid. They’re the ones where you just need water and a brush and when you paint over the picture the colour appears. Perfect for occupying a spare half hour. Only problem is I have to stop myself from doing all the painting as they’re a bit addictive!