stained glass – joyful parenting

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Just about this time last year, when Travis was two-and-a-half, we made toddler stained glass. Now that he’s three-and-a-half, we’ve grown a bit more sophisticated with our designs! This project introduced a new art medium – puffy paint! – which absolutely delighted Travis.

First, place a piece of contact paper, sticky side down, on a work surface. You’re going to use your puffy paint directly on here, so make sure the contact paper is some place it can dry undisturbed for a while.

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I knew Travis wouldn’t be able to draw the exact outline of a house for our stained glass, so I set up two work stations side by side. While I outlined the house, he went wild with other puffy paints on his work surface.

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He told me he’d painted a castle, a prince, a king, and the girls visiting (whoops, too much Cinderella!). Meanwhile, he was ecstatic when he realized I had copied the house shape off of a template online. Next time I would make sure to have a large bottle of black puffy paint on hand – I had to switch to green mid-way.

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Let your puffy paint dry overnight.

To fill in the panes of our “glass”, we used glitter glue in lots of fun shades.

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After a bit of trial and error, Travis grew quite adept at keeping the glitter glue between the lines of the puffy paint.

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We did run out of puffy paint with a few spaces left to fill, so I mixed up some quick colored glue (glue and any shade of tempera paint). Let dry completely again.

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Trim any excess contact paper, and then your stained glass will adhere right to any window.

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It was so beautiful with the sun shining through!

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What other shapes or designs would you make to hang as “stained glass”? We’d love to hear in the comments!

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This art project is gorgeous in a window hit by direct sunlight, and your toddler will be unable to resist the sticky surface!

While Travis was asleep, I cut scraps of multi-colored tissue paper and crepe paper, and arranged them in a bin. I then drew little floral motifs and various shapes on a large piece of contact paper with permanent markers.

Tape the contact paper, sticky side out, to a window and leave it for your toddler to find. In the morning, it only took Travis about 5 minutes. “Mom, you drew clouds!” (Well, I was going for flowers, but good enough!)

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Now that he had spotted it, I brought over the tissue paper scraps and showed him how they adhered to the paper.

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He tested out a few pieces, and then became very interested in the tissue paper itself for a while.

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His favorite way to attach the pieces was by crumpling them into balls first, an idea I hadn’t even considered!

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It was a project that we didn’t do all at once, bur rather one that he returned to over the course of the day. He also discovered how sticky the contact paper felt if he pressed it with his fingers!

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The project was best when we had gorgeous sunlight spilling in at midday. “Look at our stained [glass]!” he exclaimed, and added a few more pieces.

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Because I wanted him to have a real-world reference for the art we had created, we also popped into a local cathedral to marvel at the stained glass there.

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