sun catcher

I bought kite paper a while ago. And by a while ago, I mean three years ago. I still have the one book I bought. It lasts a hella long time for our family, and incredibly useful. Think tissue paper that isn't able to be poked through. Right? That's awesome.

So for summer vacation, we created some kite sun catchers for the windows.

There is no special trick for these. I think they are self-explanatory.

You take two pieces of card stock, or one piece folded in half, depending on the size of whatever you are making.

We made some kites before summer vacation. So, we drew a diamond, cut out the middle. Then we glued kite paper in differing cuts and shapes to the inside of the bottom sheet. (Think of it as opening a hotdog bun. Flip the top over next to the bottom sheet. We put glue stick on the bottom black paper. You can use any adhesive--scrapbook tape, modge podge, whatevs. Using glue on the kite paper where the sun will shine through will also make the glue shine through, just a little FYI.

Then you put glue on the top flipped over piece of card stock, flip it back over and place it on top of the bottom sheet. For these kites, I also cut some ribbon for the tail.

For summer solstice, we decided to create a sun and moon combination. This is it's temporary home.

I do think these suncatchers look cooler in person. *sigh*

birds on a wire

Today, we took a break from Valentine's Day to do this craft from lilla a's blog. I just love the way these look. Actually, I love stained glass projects, or fake stained glass projects. I did this Waldorf star last year, and still have it up in my window, though this time, I was determined not to repeat the errors of last year, which was simply that we only cut one star, so it looks cool from the inside, but not from the outside.

Anyway, the process was very easy. All of my glue sticks are out of stick, because little people steal them and leave them open. Harumph. But that was actually fine, because I used two-sided tape, and it was easy to work with.

First, I took an 8" x 8" piece of black card stock, and folded it in half, then I drew two birds in white.

Then Beezus and I cut them out like so.

Then I opened them up and lined it in double-sided tape.

That is just one bird, whereas the previous picture is two birds. (Did that make sense?)

Then I pulled out my kite paper. I love having this kite paper. It was more expensive than other kid craft supplies, but I have also had an entire book for three years. Kite paper stands up BEAUTIFULLY to all kind of crafts that tissue paper doesn't. I have some other crafts in the pipeline that Beezus and I wanted to do with kite paper. The cool thing about Lilla's birds was the beautiful way the tissue paper laid on top of each other, creating new colors. Beezus and I used red as the connector color.

After we were done, and taking down our snowflakes, Beezus said that they should be birds on a wire, and I loved that idea, so we used double sided tape and sock yarn to create a wire, and the lovely birds watching the world go by.