Squish Painting : 9 Steps

Squish painting is absolutely one of my favorite projects because it is so easy a 3 year old can do it & the results are beautiful. In other words pretty much anyone can enjoy this project. This is the foundation for many of my other projects & is a great place to start building your maker skills!

Note: The below supplies are separated into Must Have supplies to complete this project and Nice To Have supplies, but you could pick them up later.

Supplies

Must Have:

Nice To Have:

Step 1:

Start off with a sheet ofCard Stock Paper. The Card Stock is good because it will not warp as much as a lighter stock paper when it gets wet from the paint.

Go ahead and fold corner A down to B as shown in Figure 1.

Step 2:

With a Pencil lightly mark the bottom of the right triangle where the dotted line is in Figure 2.

Step 3:

Now cut along the pencil mark that you just made.

Step 4:

Now you have a square piece of paper! Go ahead and fold the square along all of the dotted lines in Figure 4.

Note: If you are playing with younger kids & want to make this project super easy, you could go ahead and squish your paint right now with just the single fold in the paper. This would make great abstract patterns that will look like butterflies.

Step 5:

Fold in the sides along the creases that you have made to start forming a cone shape.

Note: If this step is confusing look at step 6 and that might help you visualize it, or you might want to take a look at this origami beginners guide and scroll down to Water Bomb Base. There you will see the in depth step by step instructions!

Step 6:

Now you should have what you see in Figure 6!

Step 7:

Here comes the really exciting part!

Take your Tempera Paints & squirt some paint in the bottom of your cone of paper. Don't use a lot of paint. I would suggest that you don't use more than a quarter of a teaspoon of paint to start. If that turns out to not be enough paint I would suggest trying the process again with a new piece of Card Stock Paper. If you try and add more paint and squish it again the colors will start to get muddy. I also would suggest not putting in more than 3 different colors.
After you put the paint in, close up the cone so it is a triangle. Here comes the Squish part of Squish Painting! Press the triangle together between your thumb & index finger and push the paint up from the bottom point of the triangle towards the opening. Stop about a half inch from the opening to keep the paint from spilling out of the cone. Now open up your squish painting and see what you have created!

Note: I remember tempera paint from my childhood being chalky and dull, so I was very surprised when I saw the color that these Tempera Paints produce while I was visiting the daycare that my wife works at. I have been using these paints for my projects ever since. I have not tried Metallic Tempera Paints yet, but the Colorations company makes them and I really want to try it. If you pick up the metallic paints please let me know if you like them!