Raid the Fridge for Art Supplies

The next time you are at the arts and crafts aisle selecting colors for your latest kid art project, how about also stopping by the produce area? Better yet, when the spinach in the fridge is withered or the blueberries start to grow feathers, don’t toss in the trash! Toss in a juicer or a pot of water and make beautiful and natural dye!

Take a break from our chemical exhausted “everything”, and create kid safe colors for use as water colors, dye for dying craft fabric, and even re-energizing old clothes. It is a thrifty, non-toxic way to add to your inventory!

For today’s ToyBrary and Copernicus Academy “Teddy Bear Picnic”, one of our projects included making bear themed post cards. Kids not only used the colors we created using a juicer, but also utilized some pretty fun stamps. Edible stamps, that is, which included potatoes, carrots and radishes, resulting in a variety of diameters, shapes and textures!

Another good way to extract dye is by boiling the chopped veggies (2 parts water - 1 part veggies). Once the water reaches a rich color, cool, strain pulp, transfer to a sealed jar and store in fridge.

What colors can you create with the kiddos at home? Experiment with: oranges, onion skins, walnut hulls, tea, coffee, berries and grapes, roses, tree bark, pomegranates, beets, spinach, peach leaves, paprika, turmeric, avocado seeds, celery leaves. You get the picture!

So, go raid the fridge right now! Make some colors for this weekend’s projects! Warm shout out to Liza from the Toybrary Austin for hosting today's event.