Salt of the Earth: Painting with Salt

We've seen so many beautiful watercolor-salt painting projects on the web, but have had very little luck ourselves.  We're starting to think the pictures are fake (because it certainly couldn't be our technique).  We had some success recently by first wetting the watercolor paper with water, then using very watered down watercolors liberally, and then applying the salt.  As usual Kane just wanted to pour and scrub mountains of salt on his paper (we're thinking of setting him up with a little homemade salt scrub).  I had better luck, but didn't want to stick with it for very long because it didn't show immediate results (once they dried, the salt sort of soaks up the color and makes pretty marks on the paper).  We tried to be patient, but I think this is one we'll stick on the shelf until we are older.