Colored Shaving Cream: Pinned It and Did It

Well, time is escaping me again! In my post Pinned It and Did It: Vertical Clothes I had promised to follow up on other pins, namely Painting with Colored Shaving Cream. Instead, I shared about our Fun with Pipes, which I am happy to report is still fun to play with and entertaining!

Artists at work

Back to the task at hand...How was our experiment with actually doing the the colored shaving cream Pins?  Not so good.

In case you haven't seen the Pins, they typically feature a muffin tin filled with brightly colored shaving cream, or a rainbow mural on the bathtub wall supposedly painted by a small kid. Well, I was hooked and in my determination to not just pin things but to also do them, I finally made it to the store for the supplies.

Have you heard the rule "keep it simple, stupid (KISS)?" Well, the colored shaving cream idea breaks this rule on so many levels and while I am sure that the original pinners meant to provide a really fun activity for their kids.  However, I think they ended up with a really cute blog post and just making a huge unnecessary mess for themselves.

The Pins showed the shaving cream all colored like this.

Here is why I think it didn't go as great as expected:

1. The kids were happier squirting the shaving cream from the can than they were using it out of containers with paint brushes.

2. Food coloring= staining. Unless you are going to be "super serial" about mixing your food coloring and shaving cream, you will have bits of dye that you will have to work to remove later. I have also heard reports of stained tile grout from people who used the idea indoors.

3. We make more work for ourselves by coloring the shaving cream. I dragged out containers, paint brushes, shaving cream, sticks, and food coloring so that the kids could smear shaving cream all over the outside plastic toys. In the end, the kids were playing with the cans of shaving cream and using their hands. I easily could have left out the containers and dye and they would have been just as happy.

Cleaning his car wheels.  The car got a thorough detailing

So, why did I drag out extra stuff and do more work than I needed to? Because I forgot to Keep It Simple, Stupid!! I saw the pin of rainbow shaving cream and imagined the artwork they would create and the hours longer they would play with the shaving cream if it was colored instead of plain ole white. And I dreamed of how they would purposefully try to blend the red and the yellow together to see that it makes orange.

Instead, they just acted like kids with shaving cream. They played. They made a mess. They smelled great!

Having fun!

Yes, and that is my kid sliding across the table to smear the shaving cream. I told you they were just as happy using themselves!

So, add a couple of cans of old school Barbasol type shaving cream to your Dollar Store Shopping list and break them out next time you need your kids to be entertained for a good 30 minutes or so. It will be one of the easiest activities you do with them.

Another note.  If this was a Mythbusters post, the reason they are smearing the shaving cream onto all of the outside plastic toys is that I had heard it helps to get plastic cleaner. Each spring I have to clean everything that hasn't been used during the brutal winter months we have here in Florida (ha, yes, I'm kidding). So, I thought I would get them involved and combine the fun pin with this fun cleaning trick. The plastic stuff got cleaned, but I am not sure I can attribute that to the shaving cream.
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I will only share the original Pinspiration when its an idea I like/love, but not when its something we aren't successful with doing. For this idea, I do think the thought was very creative and a super cute idea, which is why we did it.  We did, however, end up with little flecks of food coloring on the plastic outside toys, and on the kids.  Besides, they had just as much fun with plain ole shaving cream, so why do the extra work?!?

Happy Pinning and Playing!

Source: happylittlemonkeystree.blogspot.com via Carrie on Pinterest