Puffy paint is great fun to work and create with. You can buy it in any store that sells all sorts of stuff for creativity, but it can also be made at home which makes this puffy colorful substance super cool for kids.
However, parents often note that this sort of paint takes pretty much time to dry compared to ordinary liquid paints. Is it possible to make it dry faster? Let’s find it out!
Puffy Paint Drying Tips
To find out what can make this substance dry quicker, we need to learn what it is made of. If we are talking about the homemade substance, then the common recipe includes shaving cream, some school glue, food coloring pigments, and sometimes a bit of flour.
All the components are mixed together to get that even and smooth creamy-textured substance of all possible colors. And since the paint contains quite watery ingredients, and besides, its consistency is rather thick, the drying time usually takes around four hours.
Let’s agree, no kid would have enough patience to wait that long until the drawing is dry to hang it on the wall!
Fortunately, several simple tricks exist to speed up the drying process:
- Blow-dry it. Yes, that simple! You only need a hairdryer set on the low-heat regime for working on the wettest areas of the drawing. By the way, the same method can be safely and successfully applied to the puffy paint drawing made on the fabric.
- Place the painted item under the sun for a while. The sunlight will make the paint dry way faster.
- Placing a drawing in front of the fan will also help a lot. However, be sure to attach the paper or whatever it painted properly so that the item won’t be blown away!
However, you need to consider that after drying, any homemade puffy paint will subside more or less hanging upon its content.
How to Make Easy DIY Puffy Paint
If you don’t want to wait until the paint will be delivered to you or you don’t feel like roaming around trying to find it in a store, why not make it yourself?
You will need:
- 3 cups of shaving cream, gel, or foam
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup white glue
- food coloring or paint (except for watercolor since it won’t give that intense color)
Blend all the components except for the paint/food pigment in a bowl but don’t over mix them: the air bubbles must still stay in shaving cream to give the paint its fluffiness!
Divide the white substance into several equal parts depending on how many colors you want to have, and add a few squirts of paint into each. Stir carefully to not overmix!
Now you can fill the zip packets with your paint, seal them, poke a small hole in each, and start creating!
If you choose to go for a paint to color the foamy base substance, I would recommend acrylic: it dries faster, has bright colors, and it is not so smelly as oil. Besides, oil paint will take hours to dry and that’s not what we are up to, right?
As for watercolor, this paint will not provide you with the bright colors the kids will enjoy.
