Make colorful designs or beautiful spring flowers with bell pepper stamps in this fun painting activity. Kids will love mixing colors and being creative in this open-ended art process. 

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This is a fun way for a discarded food to become a kids paint tool!

In this painting activity we use red, green and yellow peppers.

The stems of these peppers make great handles for kids to hold. This allows kids to easily stamp designs onto paper. 

Fun fact about bell peppers.

• A bell pepper is technically a fruit and not a veggie although, like the tomato, we often refer to it as a vegetable. The color progresses from green to yellow to orange to red the longer it remains on the stem.

This is a sturdy fruit, and suitable for a painting activity with toddlers and preschoolers.

Painting with fruits and veggies is fun any time of year, but it is especially meaningful to add to a spring theme or to a fall harvest unit with preschoolers.

Related: Exploring Seeds in Foods We Eat

Exploring foods and how they are grown helps kids understand how the food they eat reaches the supermarket.

Painting with pepper stamps 

Save the tops of the peppers you remove during meal preparation.

Choose peppers with long stems that will make the best handles.

The peppers can be cut in different ways to provide a variety of stamp options.

Use different colors of peppers and paints to add interest to the activity.

Instructions for painting with pepper tops

Slice a top portion off each pepper. Remove the seeds. (Save the seeds for other activities!)

There are two ways to make pepper stamps as shown in the image above.

• Leave the stem and pepper top intact like the red pepper, to use as a large round stamp.

• Remove the stem completely like the yellow pepper, to make a smaller stamp.

How to make flowers with pepper stamps

1. Cut notches in the red pepper stamp to make flower petals.

2. Dip the red pepper in red paint and stamp the flower petals onto the paper.

3. Dip the smaller pepper stamp in yellow paint to make the pollen in the center of the flower.

4. Dip the yellow pepper in green paint and make a long swipe to create the stem of the flower.

Learning through play

• Mix two or more colors using the yellow pepper stamp.
• Observe the different sizes, shapes and colors of the stamps.
• Talk about colors and shapes in the pictures.

There are lots of creative ways to use discarded or leftover food as paint stamps. Shapes cut from a pumpkin can be used in an art activity.  Artsy Craftsy Mom creates flowers with okra and french beans. Crafty Morning shows how to paint with celery stalks.

  More stamping activities!

Stamping with pumpkin pieces

Visit our Painting Pinterest board for more painting activities!