Kool-aid Sidewalk Paint

Since being in the US, I have been seeing lots of new things in the store, and one of them was sidewalk paint. I knew I had seen a few posts online about how to make your own. It was quite simple actually, just cornstarch, water, and dye. I was not too happy about the thought of my kids getting food coloring all over themselves, even if it were just a few drops in the paint. I remembered reading about someone using the concentrated Kool-aid packets to color homemade play stuff for their kids, so that's what we tried. Results: fantastic!

I googled homemade sidewalk paint and looked at a few places and basically, the recipe is to add water to your cornstarch until you reach desired consistency. Here's what I did. After cleaning out my parent's cupboards, I found some trays from some dessert shells, I thought they'd be perfect for small amounts and lots of colors of paint. First, I filled each well half way with cornstarch:



Then, I sprinkled about half the packet of the Kool-aid in each one, and mixed it into the dry cornstarch. For non-primary colors, I used about 1/4 of the packet of both colors that I'd need to combine to make that color:



Next, I took the trays outside to add the water (less mess in the house). I added water to each well so that before mixing it was just below the top line of the well. This was a bit of a mistake because the mixing caused some to splash over the sides into the other wells. Also, I recommend bigger wells (like normal cupcake sized ones)- because it was hard to mix, I had to use the bottom end of a kids' paintbrush, so my hand was hurting and it took a while to get each one done.



As for consistency, I'd recommend more on the soupy side than pudding consistency, so if you mix and it's too thick, add more water. The soupier ones seemed to spread better on the pavement. When dried, no matter how thick the paint was, they all looked the same and it looked as though we had used chalk. Also, fatter paint brushes would be easier to use for the kids.

The paints smelled delicious, in fact, at the beginning, there was more smelling than painting.



Here they are painting away:



The next day, the paints were a bit dried out, I added more water and they were as good as new. We have had them lying around for about 2 weeks now, and you can still rejuvenate them.