Homemade Chalk Pastels

I checked the craft stores and online to find some Chalk Pastels. They are quite expensive for what you get so I decided to look for ways of making them ourselves.  It would also be an exciting experiment. I found some information online about making pastels using oatmeal water as the binder.  hmmmm.....

The recipe that we tried was to boil 1/4 cup of rolled oats and 1 liter of water. Strain Use the water only, it is the binder.

Mix 1/2 cup talc powder (unscented, this is the filler) with 2 Tablespoons of powdered tempera paint (This is the pigment). I had a hard time finding this but it can be ordered online. This powder mixed with water makes the liquid paint so it can be used for that as well.

Add tablespoons of the oatmeal water and mix to the consistancy of clay but not sticky.  Roll it out onto newspaper into shapes like crayons. Cut the lengths that you want and let dry for twenty four hours.

 Now we did adjust our recipe a little.. We did blue first and it was too crumbly so with the next batch I used a little more oatmeal because the binder was too week. After you have your color, you can add a little white pigment to make it a lighter shade. We had fun with this and when It dries we hope that it works. We will update with a later post.


****UPDATE****

Some colors came out more crumbly than others and some were not very smooth. All were usable. I think perfecting the recipe would work, stronger binder etc. Fun project, great for the kids and ends with art supplies. I am not complaining.



Mixing the filler with the pigment.






Rolling out the shapes.

We did slightly different shades for the blue.