Kiddie Glue Batik

Gail Bartel just posted a great tutorial on her blog "That artist woman" about how to do batik with kids, but instead of using frightening hot wax and dye baths as traditional batik involves, which is far from kid friendly, she uses school glue and watered down acrylic paint.

Me and the kids gave it a go and it was great fun, lovely and messy and turned out great. I was going to get Elmer's school glue, but Elmer's galactic sparkly glue (which is what Gail uses in her tutorial) was on sale at a quarter of the price, so I got that instead. I picked up a cotton bed sheet from goodwill and ripped it into squares about a foot and a half wide. The kids painted their hands with the glue and then did handprints and I wrote their names, we did some other random spodging with the glue and then left it to dry overnight.

Next day I mixed up some watered down acrylic paint in the egg trays from our fridge and the kids and Paul painted over the whole sheet. Paul you will notice is wearing a white tshirt to do this. Silly Paul, and yes the kids are in PJs with bed head because it was before 9am.

We left them to dry and then laundered off the glue to get lovely finished pieces that I think I'll make into cushions for their beds. We have lots more of the glue and spare sheet, so we can make more and maybe a cool patchwork quilt eventually.

If your kids are a bit older and have a longer attension span then it would be cool to slip a sheet of cardboard into a pillowcase and do both sides.