Sponge Painting: What Materials Do You Need To Start Sponge Painting

Sponge painting is a really cheap hobby craft, so it is unlikely that you will go to great expense and the amount of old furniture or picture frames that can be transformed with this easy to learn method of sponge painting is easily done. The materials and equipment that you will need are fairly basic, so you can pretty much start sponge painting straight away.

Paint brushes

A good selection of various sizes will do and different varieties of brush, household paint brushes together with inexpensive watercolor brushes will do just fine as you will need to paint the printing blocks later that you create with them.

Scrap paper/ Kitchen Paper & Newspaper

These will be particularly useful for testing prints and using for some decorative paint print effects, especially wth the kitchen paper as that kind of rough texture lends itself to paint effects quite well.

Old Pots, Pallettes & Jars

Mixing your paints, make it more better to come up with different shades of colour, so you will need these, so save any that you don't throw away.

Masking Tape

This is great for sectioning off certain areas of your project and also you can position some template cut outs and place them on your projects too.

Assorted Pieces Old Cardboard

Excellent for templates and stencils, it is a cheap resource that any household has, so use these for your projects.

Pair Of Scissors

Useful for cutting out your template designs and printing blocks, also maybe a craft knife could be handy if you use thinner card.

Natural Sea Sponges Or Cheaper Alternatives

These will be your sponge pads for painting and you can use them as your printing blocks.

Other Assorted Items For Paint Distressing

Sandpaper - This could be used for distressing already layed down paint, adding scratches to the paintwork.

Plastic Bags - The folds and creases with paint on them create cool almost random paint effects.

Bubble Wrap - A fun paint effect that produces great bubble like prints.

Wax Polish - This can be used to create an shiny effect on the paint after painting to preserve the paint effects.

Assorted Junk Items - Cotton buds, bottle caps, paper clips, monkey nuts, in fact anything you can think of can create unusual paint effects that print well on your current projects.

Essential Paints

Emulsion paint is one that is useful for the base coats of your projects, but also acrylic paints can be used for your fiddly decorative effects, you don't have to go to expense so try and find a few sample pots and small pots of paint at first, your paint supplies will increase in time, if yu start to enjoy sponge painting.

Other things like varnish and certain primer paints maybe required to start (prime) and finish (varnish) your art projects.

This is pretty much all you need, you will no doubt find other things useful, but for now it is about exploring sponge art painting.