Soap Foam Prints

In the past, we have made fun bubble prints using tempera paint. These Soap Foam Prints are similar, but with a slight twist. Rather than making the prints from large bubbles, we made the soap really foamy and used liquid watercolors instead, which resulted much more colorful prints. Not only does this art activity produce beautiful results, it is super fun for kids as it involves bubbles. For more bubbly fun, try our Bubble Wrap Stomp painting.

You will need:

Dish soap
Liquid watercolors
Large container
Water
Straw
Spoon
White paper

You will want to use a big enough container to get a nice sized print. Add a few squirts of laundry detergent and fill the container 3/4 full with water. When you do this, you will get this fluffy soap foam.

Squeeze some drops of liquid watercolors onto the soap foam.

You can make up lots of beautiful color combinations. If you use the spoon to swirl the colors, you will get more of a tie dye rainbow effect.

While you are making your prints, the soap foam will start to go down. To revive it, simply use a straw to blow the bubbles higher and then stir with a spoon to create more soap foam. If you are having a child blowing the bubbles through the straw, please make sure they are old enough to understand that they should just the blow the mixture, not suck any up. Please supervise your child.

When you have the colors you desire, have your child press a piece of paper on top of the soap foam.

When you pull the paper up, there is no need to get rid of any extra foam on the paper. As the paper dries, the foam will disappear leaving behind a beautiful print.

When my kids were done making their soap foam prints, they had lots of fun making big bubble sculptures by blowing into the soapy mixture with their straws.

My kids were amazed at the vibrant prints the soap foam produced. The reason we were able to get such brightly colored prints is that liquid watercolors are very concentrated. If you don't have access to liquid watercolors, you can try this with food coloring and see if you get similar results.