DIY Spin Art: Easy Crafts for Kids

A few years ago, The Jersey Momma's Boy wanted to have an art-themed party for his birthday (you can read all about that here). We already decided on making our own sand art, and I thought it would be cool to have spin art, too. Unfortunately, it was about $86.00 to rent a spin art machine, so that wasn't going to happen. What did happen was another Pinterest find...salad spinner spin art!!

Out of all the Pinterest projects I ever experimented with, this is one of my favorite. I just think it's a brilliant idea, and there are so many things you can use it for (check out my post about spin art t-shirts here).

What You'll Need:

-A salad spinner. I bought a plastic one for $4.99 at Walmart. You can use your own salad spinner for this but I don't recommend it. It really gets completely paint splattered, and although you can clean it, do you really want to? You might as well just spend the 5 bucks and get one designated for the task at hand.

-white construction paper or card stock (if the paper is too thin it won't work).

-different colored acrylic paints (I truly think you can use any kind of paint, but we used acrylics in small bottles)

-You'll also need a tray of some kind to put beneath the spinner, in case any paint leaks out. We happened to have an old cookie tin that fit perfectly.

Directions:

1. Trace your paper: Remove the inner basket of the salad spinner and trace it on your construction paper. Cut out the circle you made and place it inside the salad spinner basket. **NOTE: my salad spinner has holes in the bottom, so we needed to put it inside a little tin tray to catch any paint that leaked out the bottom. I used the bottom of an old cookie tin - see photo above).

If you drip the paint like this you might not get a very "spinny" effect

2. "Squiggle" the paint on the paper. At first we tried dripping the paint on the paper and then spinning it, but the effect was not very spinny looking. So the next attempt we squiggled the paint across the paper in long squirts. Do NOT use a lot of paint. Too much will weigh down the paper and cause the colors to mush together and turn brown.

3. Close the top and spin the spinner quickly. You can stop and open it up to check whenever you like. Sometimes the paper will fold over on itself, especially if you used too much paint or if the paper is too thin. That's okay, just flip it back open and try again. When we closed the top and spun it, this is what we saw:

Sooo cool! You can imagine our exclamations of, Woooaaah! Cooool! when we saw this!

We must've made about ten more.

3. Remove paper and let dry. We put ours on wax paper, and since the paints were acrylic, they dried quickly.

And honestly, because the mess was self-contained in the spinner, there really wasn't much to clean up afterwards. I keep all of my paint bottles in a little shoebox ('cause that's how I roll) so I just put it all away when we were done. I didn't bother washing the spinner since most of the paint dripped out into the drip tray.

Important Jersey Momma Tips:

*don't use too much paint, otherwise you just end up with a brownish, blob of spin art. Long squiggles or lines of color spread throughout the paper work best instead of drops. Too much paint also results in the paper folding up inside the spinner because it gets too wet.

*if your paper is too thin or cut too small for the basket, it might not work. The paper will just keep flopping over. So be sure to use a heavy enough paper and a smaller ratio of paint.

*remember, if your art is not coming out with a "spin" effect, try squiggling your paint on the paper instead of dripping it. Dripping it will still look cool, but you want it to have that spun-out look to achieve the real effect.

*you can use your finished art to make cards, shapes, valentines, stationary, or just fun designs.