Summer fun Day 18!! Making stained glass candle holders.

Hi friends!! Sending lots of big hugs to you all tonight. I have read lots of bad news from so many people on my facebook today. I didn't have the best day either, but I don't have anything to really complain about.....just kid's being kid's. I hope everyone who had a hard day can sit back and relax tonight, with no stress at all! (((HUGS)))

Today is day 18 of our daily summer activities! I have gone crazy coming up with all these ideas for each day, and I will be honest here.....it got a little overwhelming. Coming up with ideas that won't break the bank and will be interesting to all four of my widely age ranged children, is a real job. So far, we've done something fun every day, and we are still going!

We had other plans for today, but some other thing's come up that ran into the time of our plans, so we will do today's plan some other time. :)

I had to think on my feet. I dug out the small vases I bought from the dollar store, for our painting project from last week. I didn't want to have the kids paint them, because that is exactly what they already did.....so I got to thinking. I have seen lots of people make stained glass vases with tissue paper and I knew my kid's would love it.

I cut up lots of different colored tissue paper, into small squares, and then put some school glue in a dish, with a couple sponge paint brushes. We were ready to craft!

I helped the two youngest paint on a thin layer of glue in small sections, and then placed random pieces of tissue paper on the glue, overlapping so to cover every inch of the glass. You want to work in small sections, so the glue doesn't dry before you get to it. We made sure each piece was as flat and smoothed out as possible. My older kids did this on their own.

 

We worked our way all around the vase, making sure to keep it all very smooth. The kids were deep in concentration, and my house was quiet! Ahh.....just what I needed today!

 

 

I had to help remind them to smooth out the pieces of tissue paper every once in a while, but all in all, they did this on their own. That is a big thing to me. I love finding things for them to do, that they can do on their OWN! The only thing I did was put a second thin layer of glue coating the tissue paper when they were finished. That is definitely for an adult to do, because it's a little tricky keeping the pieces all smoothed out when coating it. I got it done, and we let it sit for a few hours to dry. It's been about 5 hours since we did this project, and it's still drying in some places. They turned out wonderfully though!! I plan to put them around the house with candles in them. I can't wait to buy some small candles and see the beautiful stained glass affect with the fire inside.

This top pic is right when I finished coating the entire vase with glue. So they were still pretty wet.

 

This bottom pic is several hours later...almost dry!! I'm so glad we did this craft today. It gave them something to do quietly, and now I get to have some beautiful handmade candle holders around the house! YAY!!

I hope you all give this one a try....I think you will have lots of fun, like we did :)

<3