Easy Contact-Paper Sun Suncatcher

Contact paper is such a wonderful material for crafting activities, especially with really little kids. Because it's sticky, it's adds a lovely sensory experience to craft-time, and it also means you don't need to bother with messy glue. When you layer on tissue paper, you wind up with a pretty stained-glass effect!

Spring means sunshine, so we decided to create an easy sun-shaped printable template to help guide your kids through making their very own colourful sun!

You'll need:

• scissors
• our printable suncatcher template (PDF)
• tissue paper (we used red, yellow, orange and blue)
• transparent contact paper (you can find this with shelf-liner paper in dollar stores or mass retailers)
• masking tape
• hole punch and string (for hanging)

How to make a suncatcher:

1. Cut the tissue paper into little squares, rectangles and triangles. If kids are old enough to handle scissors, they can take care of this themselves, or you can have them rip the tissue paper into little pieces.

2. Print out our suncatcher template (click for PDF). Tape it to a table. Cut a piece of contact paper to fit, and then remove the back of it. Tape the contact paper on top of the template, sticky-side up.

3. Hand over the bits of tissue paper and let the kids start filling in their suns!  

4. When the kids are happy with their creations, take another piece of contact paper, remove the backing, and layer it on top of the completed sun, stick-side down. You're creating a little contact-paper sandwich, with the sun between the two sticky sides. 

5. If you want to, you can now trim your sun (we trimmed ours into a circle) and hang it in a window. It looks so lovely when the sunlight hits it! It really does look like stained glass. 

We hope this little suncatcher catches lots of sun for you and the kids in your life this spring!