Painting Children’s Toys with Milk Paint

Kids’ kitchens and wooden play food are where it is at! These are the trends taking over the world of toddler entertainment, and the price tags are going hand in hand. Because we love a good tutorial – especially a budget-friendly one – we wanted to share how to make wood play food that was painted using biodegradable paint. Homestead House’s Milk Paint is also natural with only 5 natural ingredients and the perfect paint for painting children’s toys. If you’re unsure what Milk Paint is & its ingredients, check out our blog post What Is Milk Paint!

Children’s Toy Makeover

You can technically make this project using wood scraps or off-cuts, but if you go to your local craft store or dollar store, you can probably find wood shapes that correspond. I did a bit of both here. You’ll need milk paint in various hues, and some alphabet stickers to label the items if necessary.

Homestead House Milk Paint

For the toys, we chose the colours Laurentian, Ochre, Fort York Red, Sturbridge White, Algonquin, and Buttermilk Cream. Any other colours seen are custom blends and can be achieved by blending the milk paint shades together!

Milk Paint for Toys

I used colours that would approximate the packaging found in a store. The waffles are yellowish, the milk is blue, the ice cream is a Neopolitan blend etc. But really, the sky is the limit here, have fun and get the kids involved.

Eco-Friendly Toy Painting & Sealing

Once everything is dry, you can use a stencil to add the labels or you can use the alphabet stickers. After the letters are on you can seal with Hempseed oil. It is best to seal after labeling or lettering! Sealing before adding stickers requires a full 48hrs for the oil to be absorbed, or the letters will fall off.

While we were at it, we added some utensils and grabbed some play food from other seasons (like carrots). To hold it all, we figured a wooden basket would be fitting for our produce!

Safe Toy Painting

Now that we’ve got the painted play food, we need somewhere to put it all! We used the Ikea DUKTIG play kitchen, and painted it with Laurentian to give it a fun look! Now, you and your little ones can get to work on creating memories and magic in the kitchen.