Twice a month I enjoy sitting down with my grandchildren to work on art and craft projects. We will spend 2-3 hours whipping up a project and always have a great time doing it. When it comes to crafting with kids you don’t have to spend a lot of money doing it. Many times I use scraps from my craft room, things found in nature or household items that I no longer need or use. Young kids aren’t picky!
* This project contains affiliate links.
You can easily make your own potato stamps and let the kids create artwork with paint, markers and paper. We will use the smaller potatoes in our bag or potatoes that are starting to get soft when we do this project. An adult will need to make the potato stamp and then let the kids go-to-town making their artwork.
How to Make Potato Stamps
Small to Medium Sized Potatoes
Knife and Cutting Board
Metal Cookie Cutters
Tempra Paint
Markers
Heavy-Duty Paper (suitable for painting)
Paper Towels
Water Dish
Foam Plates or Plastic Butter Dish Lids
Have an adult cut the potato in half. You can get two stamps per potato. Have an adult cut the desired shape into the sliced end of the potato by using a knife. You can also push a metal cookie cutter into the sliced end of the potato and cut around it. Stars, circles, squares, basic flower shapes, etc. work well. Stay away from very detailed cookie cutters with a lot of nooks and crannies.
Squirt the tempra paint onto a foam plate or onto a plastic butter dish lid. Have the child dip the potato stamp into the paint. If they want to change colors using the same stamp: Wet a paper towel in water (the water dish), use paper towel to wipe the paint off of the stamp before dipping it into a new color.
Tempra paint dries pretty quickly. Our’s was dry within 30 minutes but we didn’t stamp HEAVY amounts of paint onto the paper. Once it’s dry the kids can further embellish their artwork with markers or paint pens. Let dry.
My 11 year old granddaughter made the artwork shown in the photo. She used potato stamps to make the heads of each flower. She used markers to make the stems, leaves, the sun and the birds flying above. She added a little bit of an additional touch to each flower’s center with a marker.
* This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may or may not receive a small commission which helps to support this site. Thank you!
This is such a clever use for potatoes, especially if you have too many of them! The picture your grandddaughter made is very pretty.
My kids would love to try this i’m sure. It looks like a lot of fun.
What a pretty picture from your granddaughter. It makes me yearn for spring. Love this idea for a craft that is fun with easy to find materials. I am looking forward to doing this with my grandkids.
This brings back memories. I remember doing this in art class in elementary school. I’d forgotten about it! What a fun idea to do with kids.
This is fun. We have done this as an activity with the girls. They liked making their own designs. After we finished with one design. I cut just enough of the potato off that we could just if again and make another design stamp. It was fun.
We did this in Girl Scouts when I was growing up. So simple, yet so fun.
OMG I had forgot about doing this. I did this with my nieces 25+ years ago and they had so much fun. going to do this wih my great niece she will love it
I love this idea it is so clever and so fun for the kids. About a year ago, I attended a short free class at the local library where the speaker talked about all of the uses for potatoes it was so fun. There were so many uses that I have forgotten most of them she should have had a handout so we could remember everything she covered. I remember one was using a potato to clean silver, another was to reduce swelling in your eyes and she also showed how to start a rose bush using a small piece of the rose bush and a potato. There were tons of more uses I just can’t remember them all but she never mentioned using them as a stamp that is so clever thanks for sharing.