Halloween Lanterns

My awesome sister gives the best birthday presents. This year she gave me a bunch of jars, some orange paint, a roll of masking tape, foam brushes and some flameless candles. She also gave me the instructions for a fun halloween jack-o-lantern craft to do with my kids.
I'm always amazed by the creativity of my children. I broke out the materials to make "jar-o-lanterns" and Buddy asked for green paint because he wanted to make an ugly-doll lantern.

Jellybean asked for purple (but she was sadly out of luck.) She decided to stick with the jack-o-lantern theme since orange is her favorite color. She was very specific about the shapes she wanted for the face. Inspired by Buddy's thinking, I went with black paint for a cat lantern.

A couple of tips on this cute craft: First, I found that putting the paint on thickly and evenly does make the end result nicer. Not always possible when small children are doing the painting though. Also, be very careful when peeling up the masking tape. The glass jar is very smooth, so the paint has a tendency of coming up with the tape.

They are so cute on my table with the lights inside. Both of the kids were thrilled with their lanterns.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

"Stain Glass" Leaves and Pumpkins

It's been a little while since I've done a formal art activity with the kids. With Buddy starting school, I've felt a bit at loose ends and haven't been very good at planning. I decided to change that today. I saw this project somewhere on the internets last Fall and have been meaning to do it ever since. Now that Fall is nearly here, I keep seeing it pop up here and there on other blogs, so I decided to get the kids busy today and make some "stain glass" leaves. Buddy, being obsessed with Halloween, decided that he wanted to make "stain glass" jack-o-lanterns instead.

Materials needed:
-Clear contact paper
-Tissue paper
-Construction paper
-Scissors
-Masking tape
-Pen

We started by ripping up a lot of tissue paper in varying shades. I let the kids choose which colors they wanted to use and we went to town on it.

Torn up tissue paper pile got larger and larger.

Jellybean was pretty proud of the mess she was making.

It was not hard to convince the kids to rip up paper.  Jellybean could hardly contain her glee, "Mama, I'm making a mess!"
Once the kids were done ripping up the paper, I sent them off to play for a little while. I sketched out a maple leaf on some scratch paper and then copied it onto the back of the contact paper a couple of times. Then, I also sketched out a couple of simple pumpkin shapes.

I cut those out, peeled off the backing and placed them sticky side up in work stations for the kids. I used just a little bit of masking tape to secure them in place.

Contact paper maple leaf ready to go.

Then I cut out a few jack-o-lantern eyes, noses and mouth shapes for Buddy's pumpkins.

I called the kids over and they started to cover the contact paper with the torn-up tissue and face shapes for the pumpkins.

The kids had a really fun time plastering their shapes with color. Once the shapes were completely covered, I removed the masking tape and used my scissors to clean up any tissue that went out of the shape. We hung them up in the window to get the full effect. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Stain Glass Jack-O-Lanterns. Buddy loves the gold one.

Stain Glass Leaf. My photos don't quite catch how pretty these are in the window. The sun shining through really makes the colors pop.

All of the shapes hung up over looking the back yard. Note our wasp trap, in the background, that is completely full.

Definitely a fun afternoon project. We're really getting excited for Fall over here.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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