Snowman Suncatcher

I've always liked how paper towels look after cleaning up after a painting activity, but I've never done a project with those paper towels before. After seeing the suncatchers on Simple Fun For Kids, I just had to have my little ones make one. For this craft I had the kids deliberately paint the paper towels. I wanted to use watercolors, but didn't have any with me. I ended up using tempera paint and told the kids to wet their paintbrushes often.

I reminded them to press gently with their brush so they wouldn't rip the paper towel.

And then I even sprayed the paper towel with water when they were done painting so the colors would blend even more.

The hard part was waiting for them to dry. They took a really long time so I ended up finishing this craft the next day. I found a simple snowman silhouette that I liked and used it as my template. I cut out the snowman from black construction paper and used a glue stick to apply glue all along the edge of the now missing snowman.

Then I flipped it over and pressed it onto the paper towel. Once it was set in place, I added some more glue to the corners just to make sure it was secure. They actually looked really good before they were even in the window!

And I love the design from the paper towels. I didn't think anything of it at the time we were painting them, but it added a whimsical touch to our snowmen!

Finally, I taped them to the window so they could catch the light. When we started this craft it was a very sunny day. So of course when we finished it, it was cloudy and even snowing. But they still look beautiful!

This is when I miss teaching in a classroom. I think a big window filled with these would be so pretty. I'd probably have the kids cut the snowman shape out themselves. And older kids could draw their own snowman shape first and then cut it out so each one would be unique. And if I was smart, I would have cut the snowmen out carefully so we could use them for another craft. But instead I stabbed each one right in the middle to get it started so it was easier to cut. Lesson learned!