We have been long time fans of glue resist art here in the Mad House and this octopus watercolour glue resist art project is great fun for kids of all ages.  I have tailored this towards tweens by using a hot glue gun with back glue.   We like using glue guns for art projects as they dry super fast and are perfect for impatient people like me!

This post includes affiliate links, which means that if you purchase after clicking on my link, I might get a few extra pennies (enough to keep me in tea), but they will cost you NO MORE. 

We have used coloured hot glue before and it is a really great way to engage slightly older children.  If you do not have a hot glue gun, you could buy one (UK Link/US Link) and colour glue sticks too (UK Link/US Link)

Octopus watercolour glue resist art

You do not have to use a hot glue gun for this project, you could make your own black glue by using standard PVA and adding black paint.  We tried that and I think because I used poster paint rather than acrylic it did take a long time to dry.  Red Ted Art has a great how to here.

Don’t worry if you are not a great drawer either as we have a couple of great Octopus colouring pages you can download.

Materials for octopus watercolour glue resist art project 

• Black Glue
• Watercolour Paints
• Octopus Colouring Pages

How to make Octopus watercolour glue resist art

Print off or draw your Octopus and then using black glue trace over the outline.  If you are using hot glue like us it dries really fast, but do make sure you have a bowl of iced water on hand in case of any burns.

Once your glue has dried then you can get creative and paint your octopus and background.

The raised dry glue means that the individual watercolours do not bleed, so you could even use a pipet and liquid watercolours.

I really love how these turned out.

They are just so colourful and fun to make and using a hot glue gun is a great way to practice fine motor skills and engage older children.