How to make your own liquid watercolour paint – from old textas!

Do you have some old textas at home that don’t work and are ready to be thrown out? STOP! Follow these easy instructions and make some watercolour paint for the kids.

We throw out so many textas at our house, I never knew that I could actually use them to make watercolour paint! So I had to share, it works amazingly well.

How to make your own watercolour paint

What you’ll need:

Old textas
Glass jars
Water

Instructions:

Sort out your textas that don’t work anymore in to similar colour groups – eg, red and pink, orange and yellow.
Fill jars (as many as needed) half way with water and add textas in colour groups upside down with no lids on.
Leave the textas soaking in water for a week.
Your paints are ready to use, pour a small amount out into ice cube trays, dilute with a few drops of water if needed.
Store the leftover paint in the jars sealed tight.

What a great activity for the kids, not only do my kids love painting, I think they will enjoy watching the paint being made. I’ll definitely be making this over the school holidays with all our old textas.

Do you have some old textas lying around at home you can make paint with? SHARE your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Main image source: Shutterstock

25 Comments

- - meedee said
  - 19 Aug 2021
    11:11 am
good plan. i have so many textas here that I coulf use.

- - mom81879 said
  - 29 Nov 2019
    2:12 pm
That would certainly be watery water colours. Not much colour to them at all

- - mom94125 said
  - 01 Sep 2016
    5:31 pm
this is a clever idea. wow i just throw these out but now they have a use! great thinking!

- - ella12 said
  - 15 Aug 2016
    3:42 pm
How great is that! Thank you!

- - rovermum said
  - 11 Aug 2016
    8:41 am
What an awesome idea. When I think of the old textas we’ve thrown out. We still have a huge supply though. Brilliant! I love that they can be re-used.

- - mom134803 said
  - 11 Aug 2016
    7:33 am
Great idea !

- - robyn_smithwick said
  - 10 Aug 2016
    10:00 pm
I have lots of worn out textas at home . W hat a brilliant idea.

- - Missey Grace said
  - 09 Aug 2016
    9:13 pm
This is brilliant – I’ve never thought of it, a great way to recycling the old textas.
Your comment

- - mom62624 said
  - 27 Jul 2016
    5:19 am
An amazing idea; I would have never thought of this and I can’t wait to give it a try!.

- - Melissa89 said
  - 25 Jul 2016
    4:29 pm
This reminds me of year 9 science a little

- - mom70876 said
  - 18 Jul 2016
    1:18 pm
wow, what a great Idea. Can’t wait to give this a go.

- - mom183717 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    3:29 pm
What a great idea to get the most out of toys

- - mom90758 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    2:11 pm
This is so clever! And easy too!!

- - june11 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    1:52 pm
I presume you can do the same with markers. What size jar is best to use? Can they be plastic jars or do they have to be glass.

- - taynik46 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    9:24 am
what a cool idea, my girls are arty types so they will love to do this. Thank you for sharing

- - mom93821 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    8:35 am
Might be a good way to get every drop out of those textas.
- mom93821 replied
  
  12 Jul 2016 , 3:35 am
  Just keep up high and out of reach.
- - mum4107 said
  - 11 Jul 2016
    5:59 am
What a fantastic idea. A great way to recycle

- - Bela said
  - 10 Jul 2016
    9:29 pm
Great idea. Who DOESN’T have dried up textas around the house?!

- - fatty82 said
  - 10 Jul 2016
    9:21 pm
This is a fantastic idea. Thank you so much for sharing

- - mom160421 said
  - 10 Jul 2016
    8:52 pm
A great way to get all the ink out of textas.