Puffy Painting - Challenge Day 6

I came across this post from Making Memories... One Fun Thing After Another a few days ago and have been dying to try it out with both kids,especially my big girl.  But with school, homework, activities etc the week days just don't really lend themselves to fun arts & crafts - so we've had to wait until the weekend to do it.  And it was SUCH fun!!

I didn't have any self-rising flour, but I made it by adding 1 1/2 tsp baking powder & 1/2tsp salt to 1 cup of all purpose flour (I've stored the excess away to use the next time we do this, because there will be a next time!!).

The kids enjoyed just the painting, but were so impressed by the puffiness after I microwaved it!!  It was a big hit :)  It was so funny hearing the Big Kid shouting - "I've finished another one Mum, puff-ify it please!". 

Here's mine (the bird - I never claimed to be an artist, lol) and the big girl's before we put them in the microwave.  The little guy was still busy piling more & more paint onto his, lol.

And after they were "puffi-fied" - you can see how the amount of paint makes a difference to the final texture & puffiness.

And the little guy painting - he gave up on the brush & went to finger-painting instead

What I learned doing this activity:

1) The paint is thick, so your pictures need to be simple.
2) A paintbrush works better than a Q-tip for painting, fingers work too.
3) Thicker paper or cardstock is better than regular printer paper, because you have to make sure you have 
     enough paint for it to puff up - which makes the paper kind of soggy
4) You need to make sure your paper is small enough to fit in your microwave!!
5) Getting just the right amount of paint is good - too little & it doesn't really puff, too much and some of it is 
    still soggy coming out of the microwave.
6) It's a fun lesson in texture differences :)  Both kids had to touch the wet paint (it feels different from regular
    paint apparently), and then feel the puffiness of the completed pictures.
7) Your toddler will eat this - both "raw" and "cooked" and that's actually not something to worry too
    much about :)

30 day 30 post challenge over at Peanuts Are Evil, still going strong.