Art activities with spaghetti brushes

This art activity will be a good change when you want to paint without conventional brushes but don’t want to get truly messy. For other activities where we have painted without brushes visit our art activities category page. A good example is our squirt painting and our throw ball painting.

The idea for this art activity is pretty straight forward. During a paint activity, where you “paint” without the brushes, spaghetti comes in handy. We have seen many spaghetti painting projects out there, but  they are all truly messy and did I mention FUN! Both my kids love messy, sensory play but there are some who don’t want to get their hands truly dirty.

Unconventional art activities with spaghetti- how to

For those who don’t want to get messy, tie a regular rubber band around the spaghetti around 1/4 of the way from the bottom and cook them like you usually do with a bit of oil.

Once done, set it out to a cool for a few minutes.

Now you have your own spaghetti brooms to paint.

Make sure your tying material doesn’t’ melt/burn during the cooking process.

WE LOVED our brooms! The girls were thrilled and I did talk them into not  separating the strings. It is a spaghetti brush- I had to sell the deal to them else, they would have removed the band and had a ball with the colored spaghetti which eventually did happen-Thankfully not before I took pictures of their painting

The girls pick out the colors in all our art activities and I try to bring those out. Since I have younger toddler around I try to limit the number of paints out there. They are always free to swap colors. Big A was big on orange and pink for the day.. Baby asked (demanded) for some pink and green ( blue and yellow actually- her colors are WAY off, it is funny (for her Big Sis))

They swished, splattered, dragged their brooms soaked with paint. Watching your kids engage in open ended art activities is such a joy! They tried playing drums with their “brushes” and ended up splattering paint.

They tried many different strokes for their painting. We were a bit heavy on the orange-green combo and Big A was on a mission to cover up the entire paper by just splatting the broom.

We used a bit of blue and yellow too.

Two tiny hands painting in unison! I know corny- But I’m their mom and I love their tiny hands and feet pictures.

Big A loved writing on the painting with a uncooked spaghetti string- WITHOUT any prompts like “ Do you want to try writing?” She picked up the string and started writing all by herself. Perfect for practicing letters, numbers..

Eventually the tension was too much and the bands came off and we did the good ol’ spaghetti painting the MESSY way.

Here is our final product hanging on our kitchen wall.

Pretty sweet I think. Next time I’m gonna spell out their names with some cooked spaghetti strings and let them dry. Slowly peel out for some tape resist art.

Thank you for reading!

Happy Sharing!

Take a moment to comment.

Other open ended art activities in our art projects category page

To continue to play with us, keep in touch via Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus or our personal favorite Pinterest.

Check out our resourceful e-book filled with many preschool play ideas.

We have also collaborated on another e-book with simple and practical baby play ideas.