Making Your Mark

As I prepare for school to kick off this week, I organize kids desks (mine too) and find an amazing amount of old markers that do not work.  Years and years of  tossing these aside, I now have recently found a way to reuse.  In researching project ideas for the year, I ran across this idea on a way to ‘make paint’ using old markers.  Can one really make liquid watercolor paint out of old crusty dried out markers?

Here is how they do it people!

1. Rubber-band 5 or 6 dried out water-based markers of a similar color together (below is Crayola and liqui-mark brands). Remove marker tops.

2. Pour water into glass baby food jars below the screw top area.

3. Put the color tips of the markers into the water and just let it be.  If you look closely at the green jar you can just see the color gliding out of the markers and sinking to the bottom. Fun to watch for kiddos. The longer it sits the better, 8 hours is recommended.

4. Remove the markers and feel good about throwing them away.

What a green and cheap way to make liquid watercolors. They usually run at least $40 for a set of 8 bottles. I wish I had known about this sooner… all the markers I’ve wasted over the years. All the potential paint.  Thank you to my fellow blogger Amanda for being the test study.

So the answer is “Yes!” you can make watercolor paint with old markers. Now go get your Picasso on!