Easy Toddler Art Project (with common household ingredients)

I have a mostly love-love relationship with Pinterest.  I do have a few techie gripes, sometimes get sick of seeing the same _________ (insert: craft, outfit, photo, recipe, tip), and the materialism can get a little overwhelming, but to have all ___________ (insert: craft, outfit, photo, recipe, tip) information in one, searchable place with photos, is a huge time saver! 

This winter on Pinterest (you can see my pinboards here, if you'd like), I was seeing a lot of posts on making these cute, puffy snowmen, made of equal parts shaving cream and Elmer's glue. 

I set out to do this exact project with my 19-month-old daughter.  Sometimes the crafts marked for 'toddler' are still too advanced for her, but I was hoping this one would be perfect - and it was!  Best of all, it called for small portions of cheap, common household items!

We started mixing equal parts shaving cream and Elmer's glue.  I may have used a little too much shaving cream!  Oops!

We went straight to painting the puffy paint right after that! 

I then decided to add some food coloring to the mix and India loved watching the colors change as I stirred!  First yellow, then I made green, followed by a brown/purple color.

India loved it!

I was amazed this held her attention for as long as it did as painting normally only lasts a few minutes, then she's done! 

India was SO proud of her work!  When Daddy got home from work, we showed him and she beamed the entire time! 

Here is the finished product after drying!  It dried nice and puffy.

The puffy paint dried fully in about 36 hours, but like I said earlier, I used too much shaving cream, so I think that's why it took longer.  I don't think it would normally take that long.   All the colors dried darker as well!   It wasn't too much of a mess, as long as your clean up fairly quickly and don't let it dry.  It all washed off easily with plain ol' warm water. 

I absolutely loved this craft in that it wasn't too messy, it kept India's attention and the dimensional aspect of it was amazing!