Halloween Q-Tip Painting
It’s SO FUN to do Halloween q-tip painting! Use a q-tip to stamp paint around templates, creating this colourful q-tip art. It’s such an easy and interesting way to celebrate Halloween!
Q-Tip Art for Halloween
It’s so fun to use an every day object to make art! These Halloween q-tip paintings are so easy to make. Choose your favourite Halloween shapes and use a q-tip to stamp fun paint colours around them!
This is a fun Halloween art project that’s all about creating outlines and celebrating negative space. It’s similar to our Fall Leaf Chalk Art, except we’re painting around the templates this time instead of using chalk.
Painting with a q-tip is great for younger kids to learn fine motor skills and grip strength. It’s also a great project for kids because there’s no wrong way to do it – you can stamp anywhere and everywhere on the page, making each q-tip painting unique.
Check out our Halloween Q-Tip Painting video tutorial:
*Note: Scroll down for the step-by-step photo tutorial.
Looking for more kids art projects? Here’s some of our favourites:
Here’s what you’ll need:
This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a small commission which helps us run this website.
The full printable instructions are at the end of this post, but here’s a list of products on Amazon and Target that are similar to the supplies we used:
Where can I get Halloween templates?
You can find lots of great pumpkin templates and bat outlines on our site. We used the small versions of these for q-tip painting. The ghost template we used is from Wikihow and the cat template is from First Palette.
You can find so many great Halloween printables for free just by searching Google. Enter your search term (eg. “witch hat”) and add “template”, “outline”, or “printable” to the end of it.
What else can I paint with besides a q-tip?
A pencil eraser (the flat, circular kind) is really fun to paint with, making a similar shape to the q-tip stamps. You can also use a marker cap or the end of a straw, which will create circle outlines.
Try tying 5 or 6 q-tips together with an elastic to make your paintings even faster.
How to Make Halloween Q-Tip Paintings
Materials:
- Halloween templates
- Cardstock
- Acrylic paint
Equipment:
-
Paper plate(or plastic lid, for paint palette)
-
Q-tips(aka cotton swabs)
Instructions:
Step 1: Attach templates & prepare paint
-
Print off Halloween themed templates and cut out the shapes.
-
Choose paint and add a little bit of each colour to a paper plate or plastic lid. You’ll need black to outline each template, but the other colour choices are up to you!
-
Arrange the templates on the piece of cardstock until you’re happy with their position.
-
Apply painter’s tape to the back of the templates, securing them in place.
Step 2: Outline in black paint
-
Dip the end of a q-tip in black paint.
-
Start stamping the q-tip around the outside of one of the shapes. When you start running out of paint, stamp away from the shape, in whatever pattern you want.
-
Continue outlining each shape in black, filling as much of the page as you want with the faded black dots.
Step 3: Add colour
-
Now choose another colour and, using a new q-tip, start painting around the templates in the same way.You can even use more than one colour per shape, like we did with our pumpkin.
-
Paint around the other shapes with different colours, again leaving fading paint dots around the outside.
Step 5: Remove templates
-
Wait a few minutes for the paint to dry enough that it won’t smudge. Carefully pull the templates and tape off the cardstock.
-
Remove all the templates and admire the cool outlines you’ve made!
-
Once the paint has dried you can use a black marker to draw faces or other details inside the shapes.
-
Your Halloween q-tip painting is complete!
Helpful Tip:
What can I use to draw faces inside the shapes?
We used a Sharpie marker (you can also use a washable black marker) to draw faces on some of our q-tip paintings, and we really like how it contrasts with the paint. We tried using a q-tip to paint the faces, but it didn’t look as nice.
Halloween q-tip painting is so much fun! Change up the paint colours and templates for a cool art project year round.
Here’s even more creative Halloween crafts:
Our book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids is loaded with 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! The projects are fun, easy and most importantly low-mess, so the clean up is simple!
Where to buy:
You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books- A- Million | Indiebound | Indigo | Amazon Canada
