A Post Modernism Piece in the Medium of Shaving Cream

At Kathryn's preschool they have been playing with shaving cream a lot lately, or at least that is what I gather from how much she talks about playing with it. When we went to Walmart last week, she begged me to buy a can of shaving cream so she could play with it. I figured it was worth the $1.18 to make her happy and I knew I could probably get a blog post or two out of it so in the cart it went. I checked my Kathryn board when we got home and saw that I had pinned using shaving cream as an outdoor paint with and decided to try that out.

The original pin called to use the egg dye drops for coloring, and although I searched high and low for some in my pantry, we were all out. I did have coloring gel that is specifically used for dying icing and used that instead. I would recommend using the egg dye if you have it as this dye is more expensive, but in a pinch it worked great. I grabbed one of my old muffin tins and a few of my big cheap paint brushes and got started mixing the colors.



I squeezed the shaving cream into the spaces on the tin (do that at a slight angle and make sure to shake the can a bit first as to not have a bit of a shaving cream explosion, I learned that the hard way) then used tooth picks to get some gel out of the container and mix it around to make each color. I obviously only used each toothpick once and tried to get a decent amount of gel on them so I didn't have to go back for more gel.

Once all of the colors are mixed your ready to paint. We have two large windowed patio doors and I told K she could paint on them only, but you could easily paint on a sidewalk or any outdoor surface that you can easily spray off with a hose. I gave her the brushes, paint, and a bowl of water to rinse the brushes in and let her go to town. This kept her entertained for over an hour until she ran out of color and window space to paint on.



Artist at Work

Showing off her finished product

Like I said earlier she loved painting with the shaving cream and has been begging all weekend to do it again (which I'll probably let her later today). The only downside was the slightly discolored hands and arms from the dye. After a healthy dose of hand sanitizer and a bath the color was almost gone. By the next day after a few more hand washings it was completely gone. The color rinsed right off the windows with the garden hose in about 30 seconds, but I have no clue how well it would come off of cement or any other outdoor surface. I definitely recommend trying it with the kiddos, its a super cheap outdoor activity that I think most kids (even older ones) would really enjoy. Definite Pinterest Win!