Fall Sticky Paint Recipe

The perfect homemade paint recipe for fall, fun and safe for all ages.

Fall Sticky Paints - Recipe for Play

I have to admit that all of the back to school posts in my FB feed are a bit depressing.  I'm not anti back to school.  I'm just not ready to admit that summer is coming to an end.  Summer is by far my favorite season.  Instead of being mopey and whiny about it I decided to embrace my favorite parts of fall:  pumpkin pie, baked apples, butternut squash with nutmeg, pumpkin spice lattes, and caramel apple cider.  Can you sense a theme?  Instead of putting on ten pounds this fall, I want to find ways to incorporate all the best scents of fall into our play, starting with a new homemade paint recipe.  Homemade paints are the best.  They tend to be super easy to make, and the possibilities are endless.  Here is a complete list of our favorite homemade paint recipes.  We've been playing with these new fall sticky paints all week now, and they are quickly becoming one of our favorite recipes for play.

How to Fall Scented Sticky Paints

This post contains affiliate links. Here is my full disclosure policy.

Supplies:

• corn syrup
• liquid water colors or food coloring
• nutmeg
• cinnamon
• cloves
• pumpkin pie spice
• apple flavoring
• butcher paper or other paper
• paint brushes, daubers, or any painting tool

Directions:  I filled the muffin tin with corn syrup then added a few drops of food coloring or liquid watercolors to each opening.  Then I topped each color with a spice or flavor.  We had candy apple green, pumpkin spice orange, cinnamon brown, nutmeg yellow and clove red.

Do I even need to tell you how amazing our art smelled?  These paints are a bit sticky, as the title portrays, but only a tiny bit.  They are just the right amount of sticky to enhance the sensory experience without being sticky enough to be icky.  The paint brushes and dots spread them easily.  The corn syrup gives the paint a glossy finish that is quite lovely!  These sticky paints would be the perfect base for the confetti paints I made recently.

As I mentioned in my tips for messy play, teaching my boys to clean up after themselves is really important to me.  I cannot tell you how proud I was of Peanut (25 months) when he went and grabbed a container, filled it with hose water and rinsed the brushes and daubers in the water after painting.

His twin brother Tank took it upon himself to spray down the paper covered picnic table.  I usually hose off the table and concrete after our art projects, so he had the right idea.  I love how the sticky paints looks when wet.

For more homemade paint recipes follow me on Pinterest.

More homemade paint recipes for fall:

Thanksgiving Sensory Paint ~ Candy Corn Quick Paints ~  Candy Apple Puffy Paint