Dart painting, the perfect combo of art and competition. Due to the pandemic a majority of my booked wedding weekends have suddenly become completely available. The good news is I have had the time to add some really fun activities to my summer plans. One of those was dart painting. The concept is simple, you throw darts at paint filled water balloons and it creates an abstract piece of art.
If you’re looking for a fun activities for an at home date day/night, this is it! Trust me, it’s loads of fun!! Be prepared, this will get a little messy. Which only makes it more fun!
Here’s the run down on what you need:
- Canvas
- easel
- acrylic paints (3+ colors)
- water balloons
- squirt top water bottles
- push pins
- set of darts
- drop cloths and plastic
- a fun, playful and competitive attitude
If you want, you can find all of these supplies on Amazon. You don’t even have to leave the house!
This was the first time I had done a dart painting so there was some of trial and error with the process. Lucky for you all, by the time we were done, we had the steps pretty well perfected.
Set up steps to prep the area:
- prep the canvas(es) by covering them with two coats of white paint (or whatever background color you want)
- while the canvas dries setup the area you will be dart painting. If it’s inside use the garage or unfinished basement. if it’s a nice day you can do this outside in the yard.
- lay down with plastic and drop clothes so when the paint balloons burst they will catch the excess paint (there will be a lot of paint of the ground)
- position the easel in the middle of the drop cloth
- put canvas(es) on easel.
Getting your paint balloons ready:
- fill squeeze top water battles with paint and water (1/3 water 2/3 paint)
- place water balloon over the squeeze cap and squeeze paint mix into balloon, then tilt bottle so you can also squeeze in some air to blow the balloon up and make it easier to puncture with the date.
- repeat with each color *make sure you have a squeeze bottle for each color so your paint colors don’t get tainted.
Finally the fun part:
- attach the balloons to the canvas with push pins
- arrange the balloons so that not all the same paint colors are by each other, to make the splatters more interesting.
- turn on some tunes (we jammed to my iPod that hasn’t been touched since 2005/2006!)
- NOW, grab your darts and get competitive snd playful. take turns throwing the darts at the balloons. **darts will puncture the canvas, and if thrown hard enough will travel all the way threw**
- Once you have popped all the balloons and you created the dart painting, let it dry well and then spray with a clear coat.
- Sign it and find a great spot to hang it.
In the photos above is the awesome painting we created. Our last step is to figure out where to where to hang them.
I would love to hear from you and see your awesome paintings is you try this.
email me: stephanie@stephanieleighphotodesign.com
I notice the balloons are diff sizes….did you use diff size balloons or filled some up with more paint or air than others? I plan on doing this with my family on family night this coming week. I am a little worried the balloons will be hard to pop, so I was also wondering if that was a problem you experienced and if so what you found to work best?
The different sizes are due to different amounts of paint in them. honestly, the hardest part was filling the balloons with the paint. Some of the balloons popped really early, others took a bit more. the more paint/air in the balloon the easier it pops. Also, if you wanted you could put push pins in the back of the canvas and then toss the balloons at the canvas and pop them that way. I would love to hear if/when you guys do this for family night 🙂