• About
  • contact
  • Advertise

Picklebums

Activities, recipes, free printables and life with four kids

  • Home
  • Activities for kids
  • family food
  • parenting
  • Printables
  • farm tales
  • shop

Floating Chalk Prints

Posted on July 28, 2015 24 Comments

You have to try these easy, yet magical, floating chalk prints!

Floating chalk prints are a super cool process art activity that is great for kids of all ages and has magical, beautiful results!

“I remember doing this activity in art at school” I told my kids.

“My art teacher was really cool, kinda weird, and quirky, and the art room was always a mess, but we did all kinds of cool things like this.”

I have such fond memories of that art room at my primary school, back when I didn’t care if I could make art that was ‘good enough’, back when it was just fun to explore, and glue, and draw, and paint, and create.

I know my big kids have the same sort of memories about their school’s art room, and their wonderful art teacher, and I hope they hold on to them for a long time to come.

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

Making these floating chalk prints is easy, yet somehow magical!

The way the chalk swirls around on the surface of the water is mesmerising, and you never know quite what you’ll get when you lift the paper to reveal your masterpiece.

This is a great art activity for kids of all ages that focuses on the process, but also has a beautiful product. There are lots of opportunities to learn about, and experiment with, scientific concepts such as floating and sinking, and surface tension with your kids while doing this art activity. Plus it’s also really satisfying to scrape flakes of colour and watch them scatter across the surface of the water!

The technique for this printing activity couldn’t be more simple, so even little hands can join in this activity with great results.

How to Make Floating Chalk Prints.

You’ll need a fairly large area to make these floating chalk prints, and lots of space to dry your artwork flat, but most of the supplies needed you will be able to find around the home.

To make your own floating chalk prints you’ll need:

  • Some chalk pastels or regular chalk.
  • Some paper
  • A shallow tub that the paper fits in filled with around a centimetre or two of water.
  • Something to scrap the chalk – we used plastic knives.

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

We used soft artist chalk pastels to make our prints, but you could also use regular blackboard chalk, just make sure it is good quality and has lots of coloured pigment in the chalk so you get bright, colourful prints.

You’ll need paper that fits inside the tub you are using, and most paper will work fine. We used regular A4 sizes printer paper.

Begin by filling your tub with water, it doesn’t need to be very full, just enough to cover the bottom of the tub. We used an Ikea trofast tub with a few centimetres of water in it. If you are having trouble with your chalk flakes sinking, try mixing a small amount of dishwashing detergent into the water to help the flakes float better.

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

Choose a chalk and carefully but firmly scrape chalk onto the surface of the water. We used a plastic knife to scrape down the sides of our chalk pastels which worked really well and was safe for little hands. You could try a variety of different tools for scraping to see which ones work best, but you are looking for something that makes a fine dust, not big flakes.

The coloured chalk dust should float on the top of the water, and you can add more layers of chalk dust in different colours. Don’t worry if a little chalk sinks to the bottom, as long as there is still lots floating on the top.

You can use a skewer to swirl and mix the colours if you like, but be quick and gentle, you want most of the chalk to stay floating on the surface of the water, if it gets too water logged it will sink.

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

Once you are happy with the amount of chalk floating on the water, take a piece of paper and gently place it onto the surface of the water. Use your finger tips to press the paper gently onto the top of the water.

After a minute or so gently lift the paper off the top of the water to reveal your beautiful floating chalk print!

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

The prints look magical!

The paper is covered in speckled, swirling, spots of colour, almost like old fashioned marbled paper!

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity

We had so much fun making these floating chalk prints and we absolutely loved the results!

We’d loved to make a really big chalk print so we can frame it and hang it on the wall.
I wonder if we could make them in the bath???

Floating Chalk Printing - an easy yet magical art activity
 

Find more easy art activities for kids here, or try one of these:

Easy art for kids - Printing with Nuts, Bolts and Screws.
Printing with Nuts and Bolts
Monster Blow Painting - an easy art idea
Monster Blow Painting
Try this easy art activity using recycled food containers!
Recycled Container Printing

 

6.5K shares
  • Share
  • Tweet

Filed Under: Activities for kids Tagged With: activities for preschoolers, activities for school kids, art for kids

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. Joy says

    This looks brilliant! I always need more rainy day art ideas up my sleeve, this one is definitely going top of the list! Thank you for sharing x

    Reply
  2. Ruth says

    This looks amazing! Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  3. Emma says

    I can’t remember doing these at school but they are a great idea. I love things that can turn out so pretty but don’t cost a fortune. Some of those ones you have there I would even frame and hang in the kids playroom to brighten it up a bit. Great activity!

    Reply
  4. Shannon @ Oh Creative Day says

    There’s something about memories of primary school art lessons, isn’t there?
    Thanks so much for this post- I just tripped over a pile of chalk on the deck this afternoon…. so I know what we are doing tomorrow!

    Reply
  5. Sarah J. says

    I know you’re in winter right now, but I bet a “baby pool” or plastic wading pool would be awesome for a large scale print. Do you think it might work with fabric… hmm I see an experiment in our future! Thanks for sharing!!

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      Oh a paddling pool is a great idea!
      I’d love to hear how you go using fabric. I was surprised at how well it ‘stuck’ to the paper, I thought being chalk it might rub off. I wonder how it will go on fabric. Post a photo on my facebook page or tag me on instagram (@katepickle or #picklebums) if you have a go!

      Reply
  6. Emma says

    Sounds like you had an awesome art teacher! I love how beautiful this comes out!

    Reply
  7. Amelie Stockman says

    How fun is this! Scraping the chalk, deciding which colors and how much to put in…love it! Thank you!

    Reply
  8. Rebekah says

    We tried this today and it didn’t turn out as well as yours. Our chalk kept sinking to the bottom :(.

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      Oh how disappointing!
      We scraped very fine particles of chalk and we used artists chalk which is softer than chalk board chalk, maybe that made a difference?

      Reply
  9. Kinsy McVay says

    Have you tried having the kids draw with white crayon on the paper prior to dipping it in the water? I’m just wondering if it would resist the water/chalk combination… If I find time to try it, I’ll let you know! :)

    Reply
  10. Gennell says

    try adding a little liquid soap to help chalk float longer

    Reply
  11. Tina says

    Instead of making them in the bath (!) perhaps you could collage them onto a bigger sheet! I can’t wait to do this with my grandchildren! Nana camp is around the corner!

    Reply
  12. Laura says

    I wonder how dry poster paint would work?

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      That is an interesting suggestion! I will have to try it!

      Reply
  13. Claire Marko says

    One way to make a bigger version would be to use a kid’s swimming pool!

    Reply
  14. Dana Kam says

    This was a lot of fun. I had my class (5/6) and our reading buddies (1/2). All the kids wanted to try it!! My only issue is what to do with it when it dries. If you touch it, it’s just chalk and it falls off or smudges… Maybe if we mix in some glue? Or find some way to coat it? Last resort would be to laminate as soon as it’s dry. But the kids looooooved it!!!

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      You can use a fixative spray, or even hairspray works ok.

      Reply
  15. Cathy McClary says

    I love this art project…we always did this in the Spring using pastels with my preschoolers. We found adding a small bit of white sugar to the water prior to the chalk dust kept the dust suspended longer.

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      That’s a great tip! Thanks for sharing!

      Reply
  16. Beck says

    Wondering if this would work on canvas instead of paper? Also wondering if you could somehow stop it from sticking to some areas so you could put other shapes or a quote onto the finished picture. Very interested in trying these.

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      Oh those are interesting ideas! Let us know how you go if you try them!

      Reply
  17. Suzanne says

    What type of paper did you use?

    Reply
    • katepickle says

      We just used regular printer paper.

      Reply

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Home » Floating Chalk Prints
welcome
pinterestfacebooktwitterinstagram

Search around a bit…

You might also like…

ALphabet find and colour activity - free printable

Alphabet Find and Colour Activity – Free Printable

Five Cheeky Monkeys and a Crocodile! Free printable puppets

Five Cheeky Monkeys Printable Puppets… and a Crocodile too!

Find our printable puppets here Find our easy art activities here find our easy dinner recipes here

Find Activities by Age

  • Baby play
  • Toddler Fun
  • Preschooler Fun
  • School Kids Fun
  • Fun for Everyone

Subscribe to our newsleter

We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, learn and live, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and we pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Find posts by month

Browse all my crazy categories

Copyright © 2021 • Powered by WordPress
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Home
  • contact
  • advertise
  • Privacy Policy