Salt Painting – Jellyfish
Updated: Jun 26, 2021
Salt painting is an activity that doesn’t require many supplies! This activity is great for anytime of the year for preschool and school age children, as well as adolescents! They are able to draw the design and glue over the lines drawn. They also have the advanced fine motor skills, patience, and maturity needed to complete this activity! They will be able to show self expression by deciding what to draw. Preschoolers may require parental help! These salt paintings will sure look awesome!
What You Will Need:
1. Water color paint
2. Salt
3. Paint brushes
4. Cup of water to rinse brushes
5. Construction paper or cardstock
6. Elmer’s school glue (liquid)
7. Pencil
8. Cookie/baking sheet (optional)
9. Glitter (optional)
10. Wax paper/Paper towels/Newspaper (optional: to protect table/surface)
Helpful Tip: A baking/cookie sheet can be helpful to put the paper on and shake the salt off onto, so that it doesn’t make a mess! Wax paper can also be laid down on the table in order to protect the surface when painting!
Directions:
1. First, gather all of your materials, set up your workspace, and decide what you would like to draw. In this activity, I will be drawing a jellyfish, but you can do something else if you want!
2. To draw a jellyfish, use your pencil and draw a half circle or an arch toward the top of your page.
3. Then, draw a squiggly line connecting the two ends of your half circle.
4. Next, we will draw the tentacles. To do this, you will draw squiggly lines starting at the bottom of your jellyfish’s body which where you drew the squiggly line connecting the ends of your circle. Draw the squiggly lines going down the page this time, but don’t make them go to the bottom of the page so we have room for things at the bottom like coral. You can draw your lines different lengths, too!
5. Now you can draw your coral at the bottom of your page. They kind of look like a cactus, but with multiple arms. I drew three arms for mine, but you can do more or less and the arms can be long or short. After you draw your coral, you can make your tentacles longer if you have room at the bottom of the page.
6. Next, use liquid glue to fill in the body of the jellyfish. It’s better to not have the glue be too thick, so you can use a brush or your finger to spread the glue out so it is thinner. You should fill in the body of the jellyfish with glue. Then, you can move on to tracing the tentacles with glue but remember to try to keep the glue thin. Last, you can trace and fill in the coral with glue!
7. Move your drawing to the baking/cookie sheet, if you will be using one and haven’t done so already. Pour salt all over the jellyfish and areas where you put the glue.
8. Pick your paper up carefully, and gently shake the extra salt off. Try to get it all on the cookie sheet if you can.
9. If you will be using wax paper or paper towels to protect the table when painting, then you can get a piece big enough to put your paper onto it and move your paper from the baking/cookie sheet onto the wax paper.
10. Decide what colors you would like to paint your jellyfish. You can mix colors if you want, too! I chose to mix purple, pink and red for the body of the jellyfish. I did purple, green, and blue for the tentacles. For the coral, I used orange and yellow! Dip your paint brush into the water and then into the paint. Instead of brushing back and forth like you usually do with a paint brush, just tap the salt lightly. If you don’t tap lightly, then you may end up moving the salt around. You should see the salt change colors. If the color isn’t as dark as you would like, you can go back and touch up the areas that you would like to be darker.
11. You can paint the background if you like, but be careful not to get too close to the salt so that you don’t move it around.
12. Let it dry and enjoy your salt painting!
