What is it about light that captivates us so much as human beings? It never fails that adding sunlight elevates simple materials into something extraordinary. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fascinated with suncatchers - they are so basic and magical and they fill our house with color. Hopefully you don’t mind if I show you one more!
If you saw our apple resist art suncatcher from yesterday, you are already familiar with this technique. We’ve also used it for pure, active process art in our rainbow powder paint suncatcher. For this one, I used a piece of scrap poster board I had from my grad school days as a stencil. I freehanded shapes of fall leaves onto the paper and cut them out with kitchen scissors.Then I cut a piece of Contact paper the same size as the stencil, peeled the backing off, and stuck it on so that the only sticky parts were the leaves- the rest was covered by the stencil.
To create the leaves, I filled paper plates with powdered tempera paint in fall colors (brown, orange, yellow, red) and then gave them to the twins. Just like yesterday, they used a combination of their fingers, jumbo pom poms, and monster trucks (at their request) to fill in the leaves with the powder paint.
The twins LOVE this process- they enjoy mixing the colors and feeling the textures of the powder and the sticky paper.
I do have to warn you- it is pretty messy so if you are worried, it would be a good outdoor activity. I just put the kiddos in the bath when we were done and let them play while I swept up the mess and wiped down the table.
In addition to being a super engaging and tactile art project for the little ones, the final product is gorgeous! To finish up, just shake the excess paint powder off and then carefully peel the stencil off of the Contact paper. Since the unpainted portions are still sticky, you can slap it right onto the window, or you can put another piece of Contact paper on the other side to seal in the powder and then hang it (you might want to do this if you want to keep it forever- we didn’t bother as I see lots of these in our future).
Seriously, my photos are not doing it justice. You really must try this yourself. The kids and I can’t stop staring at it. Now if the leaves on our actual trees would start turning already, it might really feel like fall around here!
Looking for more fall-themed activities for little ones? Check out our fall invitations to play series!
This post was shared at some of these fabulous link parties.
Oh my word, these are gorgeous!! What a great way to combine process/experience art with a beautiful result.
Can’t wait to try this !!!
Thanks Mary Catherine! It was one of our favorite fall projects!
Oooooooh, so cool! This is definitely enticing-looking.
Thanks Jeanette! That’s a big compliment coming from the Queen of Cool 😉
I think I will try this but use spices in fall colors to add to the sensory experience. Thanks!!
What a cool idea, Shylena! I’d love to know how it turned out!
Ok. This is really neat! I’ve never thought of using the paint in its powder form! Your leaves are beautiful, Stephanie! We may have to give this a go here! And what’s up with the real leaves this year? Ours aren’t turning colour here either! It sure isn’t as pretty as it usually is at this time of year.
These are so gorgeous. I can’t even imagine how amazing they are in person! Your freehand skills are making me a bit envious :).
Love this and can’t wait to try it. We have a ton of regular paint on hand, would that work too or do we need the powder paint?
Hi Annette! Unfortunately for this to work the way we did it, you need to use dry paint powder or something similar so it will stick to the sticky contact paper. Otherwise I think it would smear. Let me know how it turns out!
These are beautiful! Thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library; I featured you this week!
What a wonderful craft!! I love it! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
what a great idea! will be doing this with the kids soon
Natasha @ Serenity You
c’est étirer l’argent et un rempli de l’apprentissage , trouver et partager un cas sans toujours savoir ce que gratis questions de jeux de football en ligne dans la
recherche de la NFL en raison de blessures ou d’échappés
. dans l’ensemble, ce sont des jeux amusants environnementaux qui permettent adultes et les enfants à faire
de meilleurs choix sur l’environnement . Si vous le pouvez ” t regarder ou écouter le jeu , suivre le jeu sur Twitter .
Somebody essentially lend a hand to make significantly
articles I’d state. This is the very first time I frequented your website page and
to tthis point? I amazd wth the research you made to make this actual put
up amazing. Wonderful activity!
Thanks for your article. I also believe laptop computers have become more and
more popular nowadays, and now are usually the only kind of computer utilised
in a household. Simply because at the same time
actually becoming more and more inexpensive, their processing power keeps growing to
the point where they are as robust as personal computers coming from just a few years ago.