“Scrape Painting” with a credit card – kids can use this simple painting technique to create autumn art or a backdrop for a beautiful fall collage.
Looking for a fun and interesting art process for kids? Try scrape painting with a credit card! It’s a really easy art technique but it’s so cool! Toddlers and preschoolers will be fascinated to observe what happens when they drag a credit card through a puddle of paint, and older kids will be equally intrigued with the process.
Blending colours this way is so magical and the results are always beautiful.
You may also like our smoosh painting process for creating beautiful fall art.
Whenever we try an abstract painting technique, we like to use our finished work as the canvas for another project.
In the past we’ve done that with our smoosh-painting, and apple stamping projects, and today we turned our finished paintings into Autumn collages.
So today we’ve used our scrape painted art as a backdrop for some nature collages.
Supplies needed for your scrape painting project:
- a “canvas” (we used styrofoam produce trays sterilized in the dishwasher)
- paints in Fall colours
- expired credit cards/gift cards
- items from nature
- glue
Painting with a credit card:
Lightly drizzle and dot your canvas with paint. The scraping process spreads the paint thin, so a little paint goes a long way.
Now have your child drag a credit card through all of the paint colours.
Doesn’t it look amazing?
Young children tend to enjoy this paint technique so much that they repeat it over and over and end up blending all of their colours into one. Don’t sweat it. If they love what they’re doing, roll with it. The most important thing here, is not what the artwork looks like, but that they’re learning and creating, and having fun. They can always add a few more drops of paint to get those colours streaking through again, like we’re doing here:
When the hooligans were happy with their work, we left the paintings to dry, and we went for a walk through the neighbourhood to collect items from nature for our our collages.
We gathered leaves, seeds, pods, dried blooms and twigs, and back home, the hooligans glued them to their paintings.
Aren’t they lovely? What do you think? Will you give this simple painting technique a try with your kids?
More Fun Paint Techniques for Toddlers and Preschoolers:
Painting Fall Colours with Golf Balls
Marbleizing with Shaving Cream and Food Colouring
Smoosh Painted Fabulous Fall Collage
Apple Stamping with Fall Colours
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
Gina
That is beautiful and my little boy loves colour mixing and often has to wait until the end of a session so we can do something else first. He will enjoy this a lot.
happyhooligans
Thanks, Gina. Oh he’ll love this technique then! He’ll be so surprised that he doesn’t have to wait before he gets to the good part! 🙂
Rachael Rabbit
Try scrape painting with BioColor – it gives such fun & bright results – the colors don’t blend/mix on the paper – don’t know quite how to describe it.
happyhooligans
Thanks so much for the suggestion, Rachael. I’ll look into BioColour; it sounds interesting.