Stained Glass Art Project

September 15, 2015

We haven't been doing much with art lately and I knew the boys were missing it as much as I was. I scoured the internet yesterday and came up with a few fun ideas for today. Like usual I showed them all to the boys and let them decide what they'd like to do. Of course they did not agree! But that's OK. They all got to do their own thing and, to me, that's a huge part of what art is all about.

They did all agree on some sort of faux stained glass project so I quickly got to work pulling everything out that I thought we would need.

tablecloth/ cover to keep the table from being stained
Dollar store frames in 5 x 7 size; using just the 5 x 7 piece of glass
Glue-- clear glitter glue for Evan and school glue mixed with black tempera paint for the older boys
Food coloring for Evan
Simple line drawings printed off of the computer for the older boys
toothpicks
napkins

Evan's project was super easy and a great "stained glass" project for younger kids. He just started squeezing the glitter glue onto the glass using a toothpick to spread it around a bit. Then he dropped colors of food coloring at random over the glue; making sure not to get it too thick or dark. When he was happy with how well the glass was covered we set it aside to dry. It looks lovely in the sunlight!

His completed glass

Alec and Ian's projects were a bit trickier and definitely meant for older children.

They had to try and trace around the lines of their picture using the black school glue. We had to wipe/wash each glass off a time or two and make sure to move quickly without pressing much on the glue. If they moved slowly or pressed a bit harder the glue would clump up and start to smear together and we'd loose the picture they were trying to make.

We finally settled on leaving a few details out and they were happy with their pictures.

We had to set them aside to dry and they'll paint them in another day with glue & tempera paint mixtures and paint brushes. If you'd like to see a completed picture and our inspiration for this project check out THIS BEAUTIFUL PEACOCK!

So far they are really pleased with how well they're projects are turning out. Though I'll admit that we really wished we had larger pieces of glass to work with that would have allowed us to have slightly larger pictures to work with.