Just Add Water Paint Pages

When I was a kid I had coloring books with colored dots on the page. I'd swipe a wet paintbrush across the dots and I could paint the picture. A month ago I bought one for my son but it was a big let down. The colors were pale and pictures were printed on each side of the page so the water being used on one side ruined the other. I'm always looking for new craft ideas (thanks to Pinterest I'm finding tons) and I found this post on making watercolor paint pages earlier this week.

I made a Joann's run and luckily the one near my house has a good selection so I was able to find watercolor paper and watercolor paints.

The watercolor paper was 9x12 which is a little big for my 3 year old (he tends to make smaller pictures) so I used my rotary cutter and ruler to cut the pages in half so they'd be 6x9.

Once I had some cut I laid them out so they'd overlap with only an inch at the top of each page showing. This isn't necessary but it was much quicker to be able to make a bunch at once instead of one at a time.

Next I added a dot of paint, starting with red, to the top (or bottom) of each page.

After I was done with red I did the same with all the other colors.

After I finished adding all the colors all that was left was to let the pages dry. Once dry they can be used with a damp paintbrush. Dorian loves playing with these now. Next time I make a batch I'll need to do it after I put him to bed since the entire time they were drying he was asking every 5 minuutes if they were ready yet.

Here he's using one of the full 9x12 sheet I originally made (he decided he'd rather swirl the colors together than make a picture).