I wanted to make chalk for a long time. At the start of lockdown I couldn’t buy chalk anywhere. All the shops had sold out or the price was just out of this world. So I decided to make my own. It’s surprisingly easy to make your own coloured chalk and you only need 3 ingredients – Plaster of Paris, water and food colouring.

Easy homemade sidewalk chalk supplies:

Plaster of Paris
Food colouring
Water
Old bowl to mix ingredients
Cardboard tubes
Duck Tape
Baking parchment

How to make easy homemade sidewalk chalk

It couldn’t be easier to make your own homemade sidewalk chalk. Gather your supplies and get started! First cut short lengths of baking parchment to line each cardboard tube. I used the cardboard inners from toilet tubes, rolled a small amount of the baking parchment and popped it inside each cardboard tube.

I then placed a small piece of Duck Tape at the bottom of each cardboard tube to prevent any chalk liquid seeping out.

I placed the cardboard tubes into an empty plastic container to keep them upright whilst I mixed the homemade chalk recipe. I added 1 cup of water to 2 cups of Plaster of Paris in an old mixing bowl. Then I added a few drops of food colouring to the mixture.

I carefully poured the mixture into one of the cardboard tubes. Then I washed out the bowl and did the same again, adding a different colour. I carried on until I had filled all six tubes.

Then I left the tubes over night to dry completely. The next day the children helped me remove the Duck Tape, cardboard and baking parchment from our homemade chalk sticks.

They couldn’t wait to use our very own pavement chalks and soon covered the patio in chalk pictures. Although the colours don’t look very strong we made red, purple, orange, blue and white chalk. They look a little rustic but worked really well.

Because we used cardboard tubes the sidewalk chalk was really chunky to hold, perfect for small hands. Next time we make it I will keep a small amount of cardboard around the base of each piece of chalk as the food colouring does stain your hands a little!