Baby's First Painting and How We Made Edible Finger Paints

I got this idea when trying to come up with a creative Christmas gift for my husband this year. As some of you relate, it’s super tricky to come up with ideas for gifts when you share an income and a bank account. Since my husband is someone who values sentiment more than material, handmade items often appeal to his soft side. We both have an appreciation for all things art, so something we can hang on the wall to remember our son at this age was the perfect thing.

I found this recipe for edible finger paints, which was the perfect thing for what I wanted to do. The ingredients only include cornstarch, water, and food coloring, so there was no worry about my son sticking these in his mouth. He only tried to taste them once and was totally turned off by the flavor. I will say, the blue did stain his skin for a day or so, but that wasn’t a big deal since I used these pastel gel food colorings and the blue was very pale. I’d be wary of this should you decide to use some food colorings with deeper colors.

The set up was easy. I placed a big sheet of paper on the floor of our bathtub, (I recommend something that can handle paint, like this one, ) I plopped my son, Miles in wearing only a diaper and let him figure it out. Placing some toys on the other side of the paper helped motivate him to move across the paper and once he started to get restless, I took him out. I wasn’t satisfied with the coverage, so I turned the paper upside down and soaked a little extra paint up that was on the floor of the tub. The result was this gorgeous, pastel abstract piece of art our wonderful 10 month old had his hands on. He may not have been intentionally “painting,” but his little hands touched it and it will be something we can look back on and remember how small and sweet he was at this age.

Oh, and my husband loved it!