Make some gloriously scented Autumn spice paints using this very simple and easy method, for beautiful and warm-coloured art work! A perfect little Autumn art activity for kids.

I absolutely love this time of year and for some reason it seems to inspire more art and craft activities than almost any other season. It’s the abundance of natural materials to use as well as the wonderfully warm coloured palette that is so inspiring!

We decided to have a go at making our own Autumn spice paints using some very simple DIY liquid watercolours and spices from the kitchen cupboard. The smell and warmth of these makes them really satisfying to create with, and the finished art works still have a wonderful scent long after they have dried.

How to make Autumn spice paints:

Simply fill small jam jars (or baby food jars) half full of water

Stir in half a teaspoon of gel food colouring, pop on the lid and shake vigorously until the colour is completely combined.
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We used red in one jar, yellow in the next and a double amount of yellow in the third to create orange. You could also try combining the red and yellow to make it that way.

Once the colours had combined and the base for the liquid watercolours had been made, we then added our spices. Into the first went half a teaspoon of cinnamon, into the second went ground ginger and the third had ground nutmeg. Again, we gave them shake to combine them and then set to work straight away before the spices separated.

I set out large coffee filters (these are amazing for all painting art activities!) and large pipettes, on Ikea trays.

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They had a wonderful time squeezing the Autumn spice paints over the papers and each of them did at least 6-10 as they worked fast and loved watching the colours be absorbed and mix together! The trays did a wonderful job at containing the mess and whenever there was excess paint on them, they simply added another filter over the top to soak it up.

We set a challenge to make sure all of the edges were also covered in paint and no white areas were left, which meant that the resulting papers were all beautifully covered when dry. The spices dried out too and made lovely mottled effect on the paint surface, and didn’t shake off as I thought they might.

The next day we took the dried filters and stacked and folded them together before cutting out leaf shapes from them. I did lots of them and the older girls had a go at doing their own too.

We then set out another Invitation to Create with the cut leaf shapes and warm coloured oil pastels, and they used these to add veins and other details.

Later in the week we came back to create more art with the leaves that were left, and this time we used gold glitter glue (both directly from the bottles for the older girls, and with a thin paintbrush for younger.) This time they created the veins with the glitter glue and it looks stunning!

The finished leaves look (and smell!) beautiful and we have used them in lots of different ways as we have so many. There are some on the window making sun catcher art, others stuck to cards to make lovely gifts and lots strung together to make bunting for the window and mantle. It’s looking very Autumnal at our house right now! These would also look SO beautiful hanging from real branches in a classroom or as part of a display.

Let us know if you try out Autumn spice paints recipe and show us the lovely results of your artistic creations!

What they are learning as they play:

creativity: combining materials to create 2D art work

knowledge and understanding/ science: leaf names and shapes, the structure of a leaf, identifying spices by their scent, mixing materials to create new inventions, experimenting with absorption