Drip Painting on Ice

 

 

The mechanism in our in-door ice maker froze up the other day, so my husband set the whole thing in the sink to thaw. After I’d passed it for the third time, I just couldn’t keep my hands still any longer – the ice just screamed “Blank canvas, make me colorful!” 😉 I set the container on the table on top of a towel to catch any drips, handed E some liquid watercolors and eye droppers, and she did some awesome drip painting on ice!

 

 

 

 

(E was 35 months old.)

 

 

 

 

• Ice cubes.
• Liquid watercolors.
• Eye droppers.
• Container or tray for the ice cubes.

 

 

 

I didn’t even get a picture of the ice before E dove right in.

 

 

I’d chosen colors at random and put them into a muffin tin. The colors looked really dark in the tin, and it was hard to tell which color was which in the tin and even when the eyedropper was full, so E and I played some “Guess the Color” 😉

 

 

We loved how the watercolors ran down the ice cubes,

 

 

and E tried to wipe off some drips that were on the inside of the container 🙂

 

 

At first, she stood up on the foot board of her highchair but after a while, she decided that she preferred looking at the colors from below, so she remained seated and stretched her arm up high to drip more paint.

 

 

So colorful!

 

After a while, E started taking individual ice cubes out of the container and exploring them with her hands. I put out a tray for her to put the ice cubes on but they didn’t keep her attention for long, and she was ready to do something else.

 

 

I left the container on the table for a few hours, and we periodically checked back to see how the colors and the ice cubes changed while the ice melted. Notice how sparkly the gold became after a while! It seems the gold watercolor tends to be “okay” when you first use it and starts to really pop after you leave it for a while. {Check out how we made Gold and Silver Sidewalk Chalk and had similar results with the metallic watercolors!}

 

 

After about 5 hours total, I tried to revive the activity and put the ice cubes on a tray to change it up a bit, and E did some more drip painting

 

 

but quickly decided she needed shaving cream  – on the towel underneath the tray! I obliged, thinking she wanted to somehow use it on or with the ice cubes but E was done with the ice cubes, and it turned into a whole different activity. Stay tuned for a post on it 😉

 

 

 

 

Additional suggestions:

• Use a block of ice instead of ice cubes.
• Paint the ice with a paintbrush.
• Use different types of paint.
• Do this in the dark with the ice lit up. {Make sure to check out Housing a Forest’s awesome post!}

 

 

Have you tried painting on ice? Leave me a comment to tell me all about it!

 

 

 

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