Fall Tree Salt Painting Craft for Kids (with FREE Printable!)

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Make these fall trees come to life with this super fun Fall Tree Salt Painting Craft for Kids. It comes with FREE printable coloring pages too!

One of my favorite things about living on the East Coast is in September and October every year when the leaves start turning bright shades of red, orange, and yellow. The colors of fall foliage are so vibrant. Ever since my daughter was a toddler, we have thoroughly loved doing fall crafts and activities every year. Our favorite fall leaves craft is this cork painting fall tree.

So, of course we wanted to create more gorgeous fall tree crafts for kids! I love this Fall Tree Salt Painting Craft for kids so much. If you have never tried salt painting, you really need to give it a go this year. It’s a surprisingly easy art and craft technique and really fun to do with kids!

Related: Check out this Pumpkin salt painting craft too!

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What is Salt Painting?

I know you’re curious to understand what salt painting is and I can’t wait to tell you! Salt painting is when you have raised art. When you paint with watercolor, it’s flat. When you do salt painting, it’s raised, so you can make all kinds of fun art. Your kids will have a ton of fun laying down the glue design, adding the salt, and then adding the watercolors.

What you will need:

Watercolor paint palette
Water
Paintbrush
White glue
Salt
Simple coloring page printed on white thick cardstock (recommended)
FREE Template (click here to download)

How to make the Fall Tree salt painting craft for kids

Trace around the image on the coloring page with glue. Try to be steady with your hand and remember, with glue.. less is more.

You don’t need to trace all the leaves with glue. Just do enough that you get a cool effect of branches on the trees.

Sprinkle glue with salt as you would with glitter. Tape the paper to settle the salt into any grooves. Gently lift the paper and shake to remove the excess salt. Make sure the glue is fully covered with salt.

Dip your paintbrush in water and blend with watercolor to soften. Saturate the paintbrush with watercolor.

Then, gently touch the paintbrush to the salt. The color will spread. Be sure to go slow and steady because a little watercolor paint will definitely go a long way. If you use too much paint, it will pool and seep into the cardstock.

Once you have painted the branches, you might want to let the glue dry before painting the leaves… but you don’t have to.

To paint the leaves, free hand draw billows of leaves around the outside of the tree and branches. You can also add dabs of glue for individual leaves.

Check out how pretty this is!

Let your painting dry completely before displaying or giving as a gift.

Fall Tree Salt Painting Craft for Kids (with FREE Printable!)