Picture in "Stained Glass" sans the glass..

So, most of the supplies you need for this project you probably already have at home.  You will need:  Saran Wrap, Aluminum Foil, a sheet of cardstock (or three if you want to "frame" the masterpiece), tape, markers, and a Black Sharpie (probably brand name, as the ink seems to show up better), and something to trace if you want to.  Off we go......

First you need a sheet of saran wrap a bit bigger than your cardstock, 

and if your child wants something traced, have them pick the picture out now....

My son decided he wanted to do Batman.....

Gently stretch the saran wrap over the picture you're going to trace, and start taping the corners

and maybe a couple of the edges to the table or whatever surface you're working on...

try to have it end up as smooth as possible without wrinkles as it will 

make your life much easier with the tracing.....

With a black Sharpie (a skinnier one would work way better) that is not

dried out, i.e. the ink comes out really dark, trace over the outline of the picture underneath...

or draw whatever picture your heart desires but just the outline....

(this was not dark enough...I had to go dig another one out that was much darker.....)

Let the little one have at it with their markers to color it in.....you can either leave the original picture underneath, or slide it out and put a piece of white paper underneath.....

cause then it doesn't lead to as many "wayward" lines if you have plain paper underneath....oh well, it adds character, right?

Gently slide the book/paper out from underneath the saran wrap

take a piece of foil a bit bigger than your cardstock, and gently crumple.....but not too much, because....

you need to "uncrumple" it gently and stretch it a bit, but you want to keep all of the texture....

Turn the shiny side of the foil down, and place one piece of cardstock in the middle, and gently fold all the edges of the foil over the cardstock.....

turn it over and it should more or less look like this.....

Gently unstick the taped edges of your saran wrap, this might be a good time for an extra set of hands....

Line up the picture how you want it over the foil wrapped cardstock.... and flip it over and tape an edge to the cardstock and gently stretch the saran wrap as you tape to the back, flipping from back to front as you go to make sure you don't have any major wrinkles on the front.

Now, if you want to stop here, you're more than welcome to be finished....or you can add a bit of frame for your childs masterpiece.....

Take two pieces of cardstock in the same color and measure/spread out behind/against your finished artwork and where they overlap put tape where you won't see it.  You can glue the edge where it will be visible....

Then Glue ( you can just use regular glue, or whatever you have, I just had my glue gun out for something else) the artwork to the "frame"....

Here's the finished Stained Glass....

He, of course, had to find the "perfect" place for it, on his Batman wall....

I think he nailed it.

So, that's it for this one, I hope you can enjoy this with whatever munchkins you have in your life, and let your imagination soar with it......  If you'd like after you're done, come back and leave me a link so I can come see a pic of the masterpieces you've done with the little ones in your life.  Thanks for hanging out with me for a bit, I hope you enjoy this with your kids as much as I did with one of mine!

Fun and Funky Placemats for Every Day

So, I'm apologizing for not getting this done and up last week like I promised, but I've been under the weather and life goes on anyway.  But, here we go.  

You'll need whatever size of cardstock you'd like for the backround (I've found that it makes a heavier duty placemat, although you could just use construction paper too.  You could use a larger size for larger mat, my kiddo's are still small, so we just used standard size.), contact paper (I found a roll where the width is just a bit longer than a sheet of paper/cardstock at Walmart for about 5 bucks), and markers/crayons/tissue paper/glue/paint....really whatever sort of medium you want to play with (well, maybe not playdough.....just stuff that will lay flat, unless you're not planning on using your piece of art as a placemat, lol), oh and a pair of scissors.

 

Let the munchkins go to town decorating their papers how ever they'd like.

and, yes, my 2 year old can't draw hearts and flowers yet, she had some mommy help.

 Rue decided she wanted a "hodge podge" of things, while the boy was drawing where all of his

meal things should go....he even went as far as to get the fork and butter knife out

to make sure he "drew" them the right way.

Rue wanted to add some tissue paper, so we spread a bit of glue and she put a thin layer

of tissue squares on top.

 

Now we're ready for the contact paper

Peel the corner of the paper off of the contact paper and then just one side and lay the contact paper over the top of your creation, and gently press down, smoothing any bubbles out as you go.

I did find out that if you start in the center and smooth outward then the bubbles go away much

better, but the boy wanted to help, so we just went with it.

Then flip and repeat.   

 

Then cut around the edges with your scissors to make a seal so that water and mess

can't get in to ruin your design (and the contact paper makes for easy clean up)

Ta da!  You're finished, and have some cool lookin' mats to protect your table from

food mess, and they're so inexpensive and fun to make you 

could make one for every meal, lol.

  

Thanks for stopping by and hanging out with me for a bit, I hope that you and your kids will have

tons of fun making some place mats that you both will love.

If you want, leave me a link in the comments section, so I can see your 

artsy mats in action.