How to do an Acrylic Pouring or Paint Pouring

It just sounds fun – acrylic pouring, paint pouring, or just pouring paint.  Here’s a confession, when I saw how this was done, I spent hours watching it on YouTube.  Whether you are the one doing the pouring or you are just watching someone else, it’s fun to see what happens.  So, now you know there is a trove of YouTube videos out there on acrylic pouring or paint pouring.  If you try this and really get into it, just search acrylic pouring or paint pouring and watch the experts.

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HOW TO DO AN ACRYLIC POURING OR PAINT POURING

STEP ONE: GATHER YOUR SUPPLIES

I just wanted to try it and I thought it would be a fun project for the kids.  You don’t have to run to Michaels, you can go basic with just things you probably already have sitting around the house.  You can pour on canvas, wood, thick paper, or anything that you would paint on.  I had some canvases from a previous Michaels run that we used.  Grab some cups and paint and get to stirring.  One other item we used that we happened to have sitting around from a previous paint project was Floetrol.  You can find this at Home Depot.

STEP TWO: MIX YOUR PAINTS

First, mix your paints.  We used five colors. (White isn’t pictured above.)  As you can see, they are just craft paints from Michaels.  I put about one squirt in each cup.  Start off with separate cups for each color.  Add a little bit of water, just enough so the paint isn’t so thick.  Then add Floetrol to each cup.  I am sure you could be pretty scientific here, but I guess my ratio was about 1 to 1.  I put about the same amount of Floetrol in each cup as there was paint.  Mix each cup.  I used plastic forks to mix because I had a plethora of them in the cabinet.

STEP THREE: THE DIRTY POUR CUP

Next, pour a little bit of each paint into a clean cup.  The Floetrol will keep the colors from mixing together into mud.

STEP FOUR: THE DIRTY POUR OR FLIP CUP

Then, the fun part – pouring the paint onto the canvas.  There are many techniques you can use, but we did a flip cup on the first one and dirty pours on the other two.  For a flip cup, you just put your canvas on top of the cup, flip, and remove the cup.  For a dirty pour, you just pour your paint onto the canvas, no flipping.  Either way its super fun.

STEP FIVE: ROLL YOUR PAINT AROUND THE CANVAS

Finally, you have your paint on the canvas.  Now you can pick it up and roll it around.  Let the paint fall off the edges.  Whatever you want to do.  We made sure the paint covered the entire canvas, including the edges.  If there was a spot that didn’t get covered in paint, we used a paint brush to pick up paint from our tray and dabbed it on the sides.

STEP SIX: GLITTER AND DRY

This is what we got  in the end.  My daughter had the idea to add glitter before they dried and of course, I thought that was a brilliant idea.

STEP SEVEN: SEAL (OPTIONAL)

Once they were dry, I covered the first one with one coat of gloss medium, but I am going to cover the others with the polyurethane pictured above.  I don’t guess you have to do that step, but I feel like they will last longer if you do.

FINISHED PRODUCT

I am definitely going to do this again.  You should try it.  It’s really tons of fun.

Once you master your technique on canvas, check out what it looks like on pumpkins here.