Shaving Cream Painting (Homemade Bathtub Paint)

Here is something fun and very inexpensive to do with the kiddos this summer.  Even better you will actually have a really pretty, marbley piece of art once you are done.

You can make shaving cream artwork and then when you are done, take it upstairs to the tub and it turns into homemade bathtub paint!

The price for this project is about $.88 (one can of shaving cream at Walmart) and according to my 5 year old “This is the funnest day of my entire life.”  🙂  This will make a giant mess so consider moving the project outdoors on newspaper, craft paper, or unrolled wrapping paper.  Then sit back and let them have a great time and you can bask in being the coolest Mommy (or Daddy) ever.

So to start dig up some sort of tray that you can use for shaving cream (not gel- the old fashioned Barbasol cream).  Oh and unless you want to smell very manly you might consider grabbing the unscented shaving cream.  I currently smell like a pine air freshener.

Spread the shaving cream as thick as you want.  I did it pretty thick in my tray.

Now you can use food coloring or paint- depending on what you have.  I tried Food Coloring against my better judgement because food coloring can be a big mess and now my fingers are once again colored blue.

So either make stripes or dots or whatever you like with your food coloring or your finger paint.

After you do that, take a toothpick, a wooden skewer, a straw or a butter knife and swirl the paint back and forth.  Try to keep the colors separate as they will smear together soon enough!

Next you want to dip some paper into the shaving cream mixture.   You can use any kind of paper you like- a thicker cardstock works best.  I used poster board that I cut up. Since it is almost 4th of July, I printed a template of a star from the Internet and cut the poster board into star shapes.  We used red and blue for our paint.

You don’t need to press that deeply into the cream- just deep enough so that each part gets a little paint.

My kids pressed pretty darn deep so I used a piece of leftover trim to scrape off all the shaving cream.  You can also use a squeegie, ruler, paint stir stick or anything else you have that is sturdy enough.What is left behind is the pretty marbleized paper!  If they don’t push as hard you can also use a paper towel to just wipe off the extra shaving cream.  I was worried when I wiped thinking it would get muddled together but the colors stayed separate on the paper.

Let it dry for a minute or two and viola!  Here is what our art looked like:

Fun for the 4th of July!  You can make any shape you like or just regular squares and any color you prefer. Hearts, butterflies, squares, dinosaurs, fish, trucks…. whatever.

Now the kids LOVED the shaving cream.  It was squishy and messy and all the things wonderful so I let them dive in to play.

This is crazy messy and they quickly made the most of the mixture by smearing it all over.  So up to the tub we went.

I squirted some shaving cream into each corner of these little disposable trays.  These were left over from a party and they were $.50 at Party City.

I squirted a little Crayola Washable Finger Paint into each pile of shaving cream and stirred it up.  Now you can let the kiddos finger paint or give them paintbrushes to paint the side of the tub.  I can say for sure the washable paints clean up fine.  If you use food coloring it should be OK but no promises because I didn’t try it. My girls prefered to just squish away at the shaving cream- they loved the texture.

So they smeared it all around in the tub and made a big mess and had a great time.

And see how pretty that is just swirled up?  My four year old did that by smearing the colors with a paintbrush and that would have been very pretty to dip the paper into.

So very cheap, very easy and super fun for the kiddos!

This post is part of the 30 Days to a Funner Summer Series.

You can catch up with the entire series by clicking below:

1. Day 1: Get Organized!  How to organize children’s activity bags.
2. Day 2: End of Year Surprises for Children
3. Day 3: Strawberry Lemon Slushie Recipe 
4. Day 4: Homemade Hamburger Seasoning to AMP up your burgers
5. Day 5: How to make Giant Bubble Solution
6. Day 6: How to Save Money on Road Trips
7. Day 7: How to Create a Summer Schedule.
8. Day 8: How to make a GIANT water bed (this is so fun!)
9. Day 9: Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
10. Day 10: 8 Ways to Get Outdoors this Summer
11. Day 11: How to Calm a Child’s Room
12. Day 12: How to Make Movie Night More Fun
13. Day 13: Watermelon-Lime Sorbet (just 3 ingredients!)
14. Day 14: Ideas for Mommy-Daughter Dates 
15. Day 15: DIY Dip Dye Shorts for Children
16. Day 16: How to Make Bouncy Balls that really bounce!
17. Day 17: Caramel Corn Recipe (just like Cracker Jacks!) 
18. Day 18: How to Make a Lego Tray (perfect for games and puzzles too!)