Notice. Wonder. Make. Holiday Landscapes - Stained Glass Trees

Dec 7

Dec 7 Notice. Wonder. Make. Holiday Landscapes - Stained Glass Trees

Looking for a seasonal craft that you can do with your family? Maybe you want to create some home crafted gift tags or holiday cards? This stained glass tree project might be just right for you.

This series of fun educational activities and projects aim to help you cultivate curiosity and creativity in your children using arts-based learning, inspired by the same learning techniques and activities used in the award-winning ConocoPhillips Hub for Inspired Learning program. Each activity is designed to be simple, for you to do in your own home and immediate neighbourhood.

SUPPLIES:

Water colour paper for the background
Water colour paper or white cardstock for the trees
Tissue paper cut into squares (as many colours as you like)
White glue watered down
Brush to spread the watered-down glue
Water colour paints
Masking Tape or painters tape
Water
Paint brush
Scissors
Pencil and eraser
White paint or marker
Glue stick or double-sided tape
Pre-made blank cards or blank cardstock

These supplies can all be found at the Dollar Store, Michaels, or an Art Store of your liking.

INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1 – Getting the tissue paper down
Using a full piece of water colour paper or cardstock begin to glue down your tissue paper.

Try to overlap the tissue paper in a random layout so you get a stainedglass effect
Use thin layers of watered-down glue to get your tissue paper to lay flat and not crumpled.
Let this dry COMPLETELY!

Step 2 – Creating the background

Using the masking/painters tape, tape down your water-coloured paper leaving a ¼” –
½” boarder
Decide where your horizon will be. You will paint down to that line.
- Tip: You can use a torn piece of paper, so paint doesn’t go past the mark
Wet your water colour paper with water where you want the sky
Using the water colour paint, create the sky. This technique is called wet-on-wet.
Let dry COMPLETELY!

Once step one and step two are COMPLETELY dry, you can move to step three!

Step 3 – Creating the Trees

Get you tissue covered paper. Isn’t it beautiful?
Turn it over so you see only the back of it
On the back draw a variety of triangles. You can play with perspective by making
different sizes of triangles
Cut out your triangles
Cut out small rectangles to be the tree stumps
Using a glue stick, glue the tree stumps onto your triangles
Ta-Da! Trees!

Step 4 – Prepping your background

Slowly pull away the masking tape from your edges

Step 5 – Assemble!

Place a few trees onto your background to see where you like them
Once you are happy with the placement of the trees, you can glue them down using your glue stick
- Tips: Keep the trees on or below your horizon line so you don’t have any floating trees!
- Your trees might be very “thick”. You can use a heavy book to make them lay flat on your background.