This paper is easy to make and a delightful project for little one’s who love getting messy.
1 hour active, 1-2 days drying time
Table of Contents
Cover the bottom of the dish with shaving cream.
Squirt the shaving cream into a casserole dish or cake pan.
Tip: Cheap shaving cream is easier to work with for this project. It’s a little trickier with the ‘extra hold’ varieties, but will still work.
Add food coloring.
Add several drops of food coloring. Scatter the drops around randomly. You can stick with just red, here we used pink, red, and blue.
Tip: Stick with one or two colors to avoid getting a muddy design.
Swirl the color.
Swirl the food coloring around with a butter knife or toothpick. Leave plenty of white shaving cream for contrast.
Tip: I would not use blue again, we thought the red and blue would swirl into magical purple but instead it just left our projects muddy and we ended up pulling it out later.
Decorate your paper.
Fold your white paper in half, and then in half again, to create a traditional folded card. Decorate the front and inside with a crayon. We chose purple to make sure we have a good contrast with the colors in our shaving cream.
Press paper onto shaving cream.
With the decorated side of your paper facing down, press paper gently onto shaving cream. Smooth out the paper so the entire sheet comes into contact with your dyed shaving cream.
Lift paper & set aside to dry.
Carefully lift the paper from one end. It will be covered in a layer of colorful shaving cream. Set it aside to dry. As it dries the fluffy shaving cream will disappear and will leave a uniquely colored Valentine.
Fold dry project into Valentine card.
Drying time varies from 24 to 48 hours depending on the thickness of your shaving cream. Thinner creams dry faster. Once the paper is completely dry, fold your paper back into a card and it is ready to deliver to your Valentine.
Estimated Cost: 3.00 USD
Supply:
- White paper
- Shaving cream
- Food coloring (pink and/or red suggested)
- crayons
Tools:
- a rectangular cake pan or casserole dish (slightly bigger than your piece of paper)
- a butter knife or toothpick
- disposable gloves if you don’t want slightly dyed hands 🙂
You can dye plain, undecorated, paper and add the details with crayons or marker after your project dries. You can also change your swirls as you go, start with one color and add another later, ect. Here are pictures of some papers we made while working on this project.
For this one we used pink construction paper.
Another fun variation, while you have the mess out, is to make some coffee filter sun catchers for your window. You can either cut your coffee filters into heart shapes, or just color some hearts or messages onto round coffee filters.
Not up for a messy craft? Check out this video, which uses a different, less messy, technique to make coffee filter sun catchers, it’s not Valentine themed, but I am sure you can adapt for the holiday after a quick view.
