Introduction: Snail Painting

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Fed up with snails eating your garden? Fancy a bit of artistic creativity?
In this Instructable we will show you how we turned a humble bunch of leaf-munching pests into colourful mobile artworks.

Step 1: Find Your Snails

Snails like eating, procreating and doing absolutely nothing. During the day they mostly do the third. You'll find them hiding in clefts of plants, under garden debris,in crevices in walls and so on.
Best to gather a few and then go back for more as you use them up - surprisingly for such inert creatures they can be quite difficult to corral in quantity. Use an old plastic lemonade bottle with the top cut off or similar as a holding-pen.

Step 2: Give the Snails Something to Do

Don't expect any gratitude, but they'll be happier with a little sustenance.
Mix a little flour in a cup with some cold water to give a thickish goo.
Take a large tray and lay out lines of the goo.

Step 3: Be Creative

Time to start painting & decorating.
Grab a snail (gently) from the holding pen and place it on the tray.
Now you can start painting.
Obviously you don't want your new friends to die on you - so you must use non-toxic materials. We used artist's acrylic paint, and for glueing (lightweight) decoration (sparkly stuff is pretty cool) we used PVA adhesive. These are good because once dry they are water resistant.

Step 4: Some Ideas

Here are some of the designs we came up with

Step 5: Set Them Free!

Now you've done your artistic best and the paint is dry it's time to release them back out into the wild.


Keep an eye out for your technicolour invertebrates - they'll make you smile when you see them. Some may go further afield & give your neighbours a double-take.
No snails were harmed in the making of this Instructable.