Homemade Paints--A Lesson In Moderate Failure

Hello again, I guess....I'm....blogging now? I've been fairly consistent so far and It's highly enjoyable semi-productive things to do on my down time when I don't feel like melting in the couch (although don't get me wrong that's wonderful, too).
Well, here we go. I'm trying hard to incorporate DIY activities into Zavier's daily life to start getting him to focus better on the task at hand (He's umm not very good at that, he loves to go go go go go go go go).
Today, I decided to try my hand at homemade paint. It was easy, making it at least, was. I may be an artist, and am pretty happy or proud with a lot of the outcomes of work that I end up finishing, but let me tell you, I do not succeed at everything It try. I treat it as a lesson, as I should.
This was one of those lessons-take a look---
First, I gathered up my supplies which were simple-
*Flour
*Liquid Food Coloring
*Water
*Bowls
*Canvas (optional)
*Tape (optional)
*Paper (optional)

Here is the stuff I used. Take a spoon full of flour, and 3 spoonfuls of water (May have to adjust that) and mix it together, squirt a few drops of your liquid food coloring into the stirred flour/water mixture and stir until blended evenly, the stronger you want the paint the more food coloring you should use, I wanted a pale color. Next set up a spot to easily clean up the mess that's most likely going to be made. We went with the high chair.

I put a piece of paper down and let him go at it, and just put the bowls in front so he could dip his fingers in, which he did. He ALSO splashed the paint everywhere, but hey, it's paint and a toddler.

I was surprised he did what he did. Hes not a big painter or drawer right now. He mostly eats anything I give him and will do an occasional way of the crayon on paper followed by a giggle then proceeding to put it right back into his mouth. But, he actually painted with his fingers a bit! Didn't even try to eat the 'paint'.

As for the color, well it was much paler than I wanted, but hey it was my first try. It was also a bit watery, so I suggest tweaking your recipe.

Next we went on to the main reason I did this. I was making a little gift from my son, to my father for his 70th birthday coming up next week. I took a tiny canvas with an easel, cut out a heart shape out of duct tape stuck in the middle and let him paint it....well.....it didn't go so well....

 It kind of just turned out watery and pale. It also WASN'T drying. I waited and waited, and the paper was drying, but the canvas wasn't. So I forgot about it, when I remembered again, and looked, IT STILL WASN'T DRY. So my wonderful tired mind though- It's flour how about the OVEN. I popped it in at 300 for a few minutes, popped her out and--it was all cracked dry and weird. But still kind of had a tie dye pretty color.
It dawned on me then that I BAKED TAPE. Cursing myself, I carefully tore the little tape heart out of the middle, tearing the edges of the baked paint a bit. There was residue it didn't look like a heart and you could barely make out in impression with the pale colors. So I have to improvise. I had this cute imagine of a little white heart perfectly in the middle of a piece of canvas Zavier had finger painted on and it would be a cute piece. Frankly, it looked like crap.
I brought my creative mine together to *try* and salvage it...
I coated it in glitter glaze, painted the heart white, and did my best high school notepad doodle on it.
It does look much better than it did, but nothing like I had hoped. It's the thought that counts, right? ;)