Craft Project: DIY "Faux" Stained Glass Frames

Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows we LOVE sun catchers or anything pretty and sparkly in a window. :-) A year and a half ago, we worked on a faux stained glass project with black glue and permanent markers. The girls' projects have been hanging in my kitchen window over the sink ever since. I decided it was time for something new to look at. :-) We had a teacher workshop (no school) day at the end of February, and inspired by this post at Play at Home Mom, I thought this would be the perfect project for the girls.

What you'll need for this project:
--pictures frames (any size)--I got ours at Dollar Tree, we used 8 x 10
--clear glue
--Glass mosaic tiles or gems--We used the glass tiles and gems shown below from Michael's at $2.99 a bag. I think we used 4-5 bags total with some of certain colors leftover). You can also buy glass gems at Dollar Tree. At our Dollar Tree, the colors are limited to blue and green and maybe clear. I wanted a greater variety in color for the girls so I shelled out for the Michael's brand. ;-)
--Gorilla Glue
--suction cups (also found at the dollar store)
--sorting dish (optional)--you can even have the children sort the tiles/gems by color as an added educational activity. I found my tray at the dollar store as well.

This project is GREAT for all levels as you can do as much or as little to help the kids with it. Since my girls are 9 and 7, I let them do most of it. If you are adapting it for smaller children you can just let them put the gems wherever, and either add the glue yourself or let them do it. I have somewhat perfectionist little artists, so I had them plan ahead.

Step 1) This is actually for the parent. I used gorilla glue to go around where the frame and the glass would meet to create a seal. This way, when the clear glue is applied, it will not leak. I didn't take a photo of this step before we were finished. You can see it below in the photo that shows the finished underside with the suction cups. I did this step the day before I wanted the girls to do the project so the glue would have time to cure.

Step 2)--for older (or more particular) children--I had the girls plan out their design on a piece of white paper.

Step 3) Spread a good amount of clear glue on the TOP of the glass in the frame. So the frame creates an edge for the glue. We put enough to cover the glass and then some. After squirting from the bottle, the girls used a foam brush to spread it around.

Step 4) Add your tiles/gems to the glue on TOP of the glass in the frame.

Step 5) We added a bit more glue over the top and between the tiles. Just to make sure everything was sealed for sure.

This step might have been overkill, but I plan to have these hanging in my window for at least a year. I don't want any of the tiles to start to fall out. My window does get some sun, though it is not direct light for the entire day, just in the morning hours. I'm hoping it holds with all the UV exposure.

Step 6) Let dry for several days. This step actually didn't take quite as long as I anticipated. After dealing with the cookie cutter suncatchers, I think these dried even faster than those. Two days maybe. Though I left them on the art room table in the sun so that may have sped up the drying process a bit.

Step 7) I used gorilla glue to secure suction cups to the back. I used larger ones at the top and smaller on the bottom. These 8 x 10 stained glass frames are pretty heavy so I wanted to make sure they would stay in the window.

I included a couple extra photos so you can see the seal I created under the glass and along the frame edge as well. It's not pretty on the underside. Remember gorilla glue will expand when it dries.

And here are the finished frames in my window! I LOVE these! They are so bright and fun. Just makes me happy to look up and see them in the window.

 My nine year old created the one below. In her words, "just a design":

And this is my 7 year old's. She called hers "Garden". You can make out flowers with a green leaf by each one. And there's a dragonfly in the lower left on the side. And a butterfly on the right side above the red flower.

This project is perfect for any child who likes a tactile experience. Also, it's a good sensory experience with putting the tiles in the clear glue. I tried to take a couple photos to show the depth of the tiles in the frames and the tactile nature.

Now, if you are worried about the weight of these in your window. Or you might like a less "messy" version. OR you are short on time for a gift idea, I have a SHORT-CUT to this project. This came about just this afternoon when my daughter had a friend over and they were looking for a project to do in the art room.

I quickly pulled out some 5 x 7 Dollar Store frames. Cut contact paper (you can get this at the Dollar Store too!) to fit the glass in the frame. Taped the contact paper down with the sticky side up. They cut out tissue paper however they wanted, in the shapes they wanted, and placed the pieces on the contact paper.

 My daughter used scrapbook punches to cut out these circles in the tissue paper:

Because both my daughter and her friend left "holes" where the contact paper showed through, when I turned it over it stuck to the glass. This was a nice way for it to be secured in place while I put it in the frame. I also trimmed any excess tissue paper that hung over the edge of the frame glass.

This can be adapted for different ages. If you have smaller children, you can cut the tissue paper yourself and just have them put the pieces on the contact paper. You can have them rip the tissue paper into small pieces first for a more organic feel to the work. They can practice using the scissors by cutting the tissue paper themselves.

Once the contact paper is covered with tissue paper, you can turn it over and put it on the BACK of the glass going into the frame. Then put the prongs down to hold it all in place. The contact paper stayed in place with the frame prongs. You could use tape to secure the contact paper more. I probably will glue it just to really secure everything. You can secure it however you like, depending on how much time you have. These would make fun gifts for Mother's Day or an end-of-the-year gift for teachers.

I think these turned out great! And are super fun in the window with the light shining through. The cool thing about these too, they look pretty neat in the window even when it's dark out. Sorry I don't have a photo of this. But the tissue paper appears opaque and you can still see the design when it is dark outside.

Craft Project: Crystal Sun Catchers

We were inspired by the Housing a Forest blog this week. We made crystal sun catchers out of pipe cleaners and a Borax/water solution. This was a super EASY project and it went just as planned (whew!). It also took no time at all. We quickly did it before bedtime one night so we could see the results the next morning.

 

 (You can get a tiny sneak peek of our new art room! I have a post all ready to give you a full tour, but I'm waiting on one more wall decal to arrive before I take the final "the art room is finished!" photo).

 The girls made shapes out of pipe cleaners and we tied them to some bamboo skewers I had (you can use pencils as well).

 Isn't that cute? My daughter put "Love" on her heart.

Here are the finished pipe cleaner shapes.

After we had shapes made, I boiled some water in the tea kettle and mixed 1/2 cup borax to 2 1/2 cups of water. We then suspended the shapes in the glasses (I didn't have large mason jars) and solution overnight.

And here's what we ended up with the next day!! I haven't had a chance to hang them in the window yet.

We'll definitely be doing this project again!

We were featured!

Dollar Store Mom linked to our suncatcher post today on her blog! I am very flattered that she would like our project and want to link to us!

Craft Project: Pony Bead Sun Catchers

I came across an idea for making sun catchers out of pony beads, cookie cutters, and glue on the Play at Home Mom Blog. I LOVED this idea and thought my girls would as well. My husband was out of town for work all last week and I knew I needed to have a plan for the weekend. I thought this would be the perfect project. It is easy, and hopefully a little time consuming. Ha! I wanted to keep them occupied a bit. :-) Here are a couple of my daughters' finished products:

Using Elmer's Clear Glue

Using Elmer's white School Glue

I was originally planning on the girls making Valentine sun catchers because I already had a few plastic heart cookie cutters. But I was worried that they would get really into this and I would run out of cookie cutters. Not wanting to squash their enthusiasm, I decided to look for cheap plastic cookie cutters. I looked at Dollar Tree, Target, and Michael's. But didn't find any that fell into the categories of cheap AND fun. I had to run into Hancock Fabrics for a some elastic and just decided to check their cake decorating aisle. They had large buckets of cutters for $8.99. They had an animal bucket, an alphabet bucket, and maybe a sports bucket too. I decided to go for the animal bucket. There were FIFTY cookie cutters. The best part is when I checked out, it was on sale! I got 50 plastic cookie cutters for a little over $5! Score!

Essentially, all you do is place pony beads in a plastic cookie cutter and add glue. Let them dry three days and volia! Not-so-instant sun catchers. However, I've noticed that this project has been tried a few times on different blogs (or through comments on the Play at Home Mom Facebook page). And some people didn't always have good results. I felt like I needed to experiment a bit before I had the girls do this. I really wanted it to work out for them. So my 2 year old and I made these the day before:

 

I made the top one and my son did the smaller one on the bottom. I didn't fill all the space in my cutter because I thought the glue would just dry and be there. But I realized as it started to dry that this was a mistake.

Here they are after Day Two of drying. I pulled them off the wax paper because I thought flipping them over would help dry them out better. But when I did that, the glue in the middle of mine came off. But my son's was turning out great and he had filled his whole cutter with beads. So I learned that I had to tell the girls they should fill their whole cutter. They were very excited to get started when they saw these on the counter. 

 
My girls are 6 and 8 years old so they were pretty methodical with filling in their cookie cutters. They did it a bit like it was a Pixos project or they were using perler beads. My son just dumped them in as I would expect a 2 year old would do. :-) I really love that this project can be done with just about any age group! It is tough finding things that entertain all three of my kids. Then it was time to glue:

 
Here is how they looked after Day Two:

Day Three, I removed them from the cookie cutters. There were still a few spots that needed to finish drying. Once dry, I used some very thin flower wire I had from a previous project and I bought suction cup hooks at Dollar Tree (you get 9 hooks for $1).

 

Hanging in the window below (sidenote: I try to teach my kids that art is not perfect and so I hung my heart up even though the glue dried funky and deep down I didn't want to hang it) ;-):

I realize this post is getting to be really long, but I really wanted this to be more step-by-step. Below I've listed out some things we found helpful with this project. I'm so glad this worked out and the girls are excited to do this for different seasons and holidays!

(MARCH 17, 2013--EDITED TO ADD---PLAY AT HOME MOM WHERE I ORIGINALLY GOT THIS IDEA HAS EXPERIMENTED AND PLAYED AROUND WITH THIS IDEA MORE. SHE HAS 'PERFECTED' THE PROJECT. USE HOT GLUE AROUND THE BOTTOM OF YOUR COOKIE CUTTER TO KEEP THE GLUE FROM LEAKING. SHE ALSO SUGGESTED JUST MAKING AN OUTLINE OF HOT GLUE (WITHOUT A COOKIE CUTTER) TO HOLD THE GLUE. AND USING PLEXIGLASS OR GLASS UNDER THE PROJECT INSTEAD OF WAX PAPER. LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF HER POST HERE.)

Tips:
1. Elmer's School Glue works better than Elmer's Clear Glue in terms of less leakage under the cookie cutters. You will get a more opaque finish to your sun catcher. But if you use translucent pony beads, they will still look neat when the light shines through in the window. The clear glue is also a little more difficult to see when you're putting it in the cookie cutter.

2. Elmer's School Glue is better for younger kids (I would say under age 4) because younger kids are more likely to squeeze to their heart's content and the white glue will hold up better than clear glue. However, clear glue definitely looks fabulous in the window so if the parent wants to control the amount of glue or you have an older kid who understands not putting a ton of glue in the cookie cutter, than by all means use clear glue. We found all the way around that it's best to just cover the beads as minimally as possible with the glue. Less is definitely more with this project. You just want to make sure everything is thinly covered.

3. I tried using a hair dryer alternating shots of warm and cool air  (I have a cool air button feature on my hair dryer) to blow air around the outside of the cookie cutter to "seal" the glue more quickly. This seemed to help with seepage from under the cookie cutter a little bit.

4. If the cookie cutter is warped, place a heavy book on it for only one day. The glue in the middle will not start to dry out with the book on top because no air will get to it. However, the edge of the cookie cutter is exposed to air so any glue leaking out will solidify in a day. Then you can remove the book and let the inside get air. You just might have to add an extra day to your drying time.

5. My girls asked me to tape their cookie cutter down while they were putting the beads in because they were frustrated that it kept moving around. I taped the cookie cutter on two sides to the wax paper and then taped one side of the wax paper to the edge of the light table. This seemed to solve this problem for them.

6. Make sure to use plastic cookie cutters for the project. Metal cutters will rust during the three day drying time. And I think for whatever reason the glue doesn't seep out of the plastic cutters as much as metal ones from what I've seen in other people's blog posts about this project.

7. Be aware that the clear glue will come through the wax paper underneath a tiny bit and they will all feel "moist" on the bottom from the glue. So just make sure they are on a surface where that is ok. I just left them on my kitchen counter. I'm not sure I would put newspaper under them. Maybe this would transfer a bit? I'm not sure.

I'm not usually this thorough, I hope our experimenting helped! I've also come across several other sun catcher projects that I've pinned and we will be trying out in the near future.