1. Cut up seat cushion foam in cubes about 1"
2. Add the foam cubes and a little water to a blender
3. Squirt in some craft paint in the color of your choice
4. Blend, then dump the slurry out on some newspaper and air dry
Using this process, I made three batches of pink foam during my trip to the US while visiting family. For the first batch, I just spread out the wet foam slurry onto a large sheet of white paper. Because it was still very wet, when it dried, the foam turned a slight yellowish color on the bottom where it had been in contact with the paper. I assume this is due to some of the chemicals in the paint, and how the wet diluted paint ended up drying on the surface of the paper. Overall the first batch didn't turn out too bad and had exactly the color I was looking for, but I wasn't happy about the little bits of yellowish color mixed in with the pink, so I decided to try it again.
This time, before spreading the foam slurry out to dry, I used a clean rag to squeeze as much of the pink water out of it as I could. Then I used a stick to break up the resulting fist-sized clump of foam bits and spread them out. Something weird happened with the color on this batch. It ended up a much brighter and more vivid pink color than the first batch, and even more so than the paint itself! I've seen different varieties of cherry trees with different colored blossoms, so it was still within the realm of being realistic, so still usable. I also noticed this batch of foam ended up noticeably coarser than the first batch, probably because I didn't blend it as long.
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| First batch on the left, second on the right. |
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| Second batch compared with the color of the paint used 😕 |
I wanted to make another batch with a color closer to the first, so I tried again, using a little less paint, and again squeezing out the wet foam before spreading it out to dry. This time, the color came out more like a light cotton candy color. Still usable, but now I had a third shade of pink foam to deal with 😬 I was a little light on the blender this time as well, so this batch came out noticeably coarser than the last one.
I put each batch into its own Ziploc bag and took them with me back to Bahrain for the next step.
