Fun with Breyer Painting Kits: Acrylic Pour Horse!

Article and Photos by Kristen Cermele

For this project, we'll be using a little bit of dish soap to create an acrylic pour over our horse. I've used the Unicorn Paint and Play kit models and paints, but any of Breyer's Craft and Activity sets with colors and models you want to use will work. Alternatively, you can use acrylic paints purchased from any craft store - they don't have to be anything fancy.

"Acrylic Pours" have become really popular lately, on all types of surfaces. This is an abstract form of art, and the fun is in the fact that you can't really control the end result. All you know is you'll get a fun dripping pattern on your horse, using all the colors that you've chosen to put on top of it. Pours on flat surfaces can have a swirling and pooling effect, but because of gravity, you'll get long lines and splatters on your horse instead.

You will also need some water, and either some short disposable cups, or paper/plastic cups you can cut down to be a bit shorter (as I've opted to do.) This is a messy craft, so I've used a tin to protect my table - you can use whatever you'd like, or have this be an outside activity.

1. Into each cup, pour one color. I dumped the whole paint pallet upside down and let most of it drip out, but I'll still have some left over in the tub, which I can use for his mane and tail later. Add in one drop of water, and one drop of dish soap.

2. As you can see, the dish soap doesn't mix with the paint. This is called a pouring medium, and will create the dripping and swirling effects on the horse because it will push your paint around as gravity pulls it down. Do a quick stir of each cup with the end of your paintbrush to help aid in this swirling effect. 

3. Hold the horse over whatever you have chosen to catch your paint, and one by one slowly pour each paint cup over the horse while moving the horse around to make sure the whole model is able to be under the paint at one point or another. You may want to hold the horse as you child pours. I've used the tail of my unicorn as my hand hold, and I'll paint the tail later. I'm also wearing a latex glove - feel free to use hand protection, but this paint also washes off hands easily with soap and water before it dries. 

4. If you'd like, you can add a drop or two of dish soap directly on the horse, which will push around the paint further, but will also leave you with more white areas. 

5. Let your horse fully dry. This may take overnight. This is important because of the next step, where you'll be putting it under water. Unlike some other crafts, you shouldn't use a hair dryer to dry your horse, because it has a lot of thick paint on it, and you'll end up losing a lot of your dripping detail when the drier blows on it!

6. When your model is dry, it is going to feel slick because of the dish soap. Gently wash it to remove the soap residue.

7. If you so choose, you can repaint the tail, or anywhere else. I've decided to repaint my horse’s mane and tail silver! Now your paint pour unicorn is complete. If you have other supplies, you can always add clear or glitter nail polish, or even clear modge podge to make your horse shiny, though these paints already have a beautiful shimmer built in!