Window Hearts

Earlier this week I saw the beautiful window transparencies that Sara made over at love in the suburbs and was just in love with them. That said, my children are not quite old enough to cut complex shapes or make precise folds, so we sought to find our own young child way of doing the same thing. I remembered some similar to this a friend had done last year, and with that in mind this is what I came up with. This was a nearly free project for us since I always keep construction and contact paper on hand and save all the tissue paper we get from wrapping.

You Will Need:

• Contact Paper
• Contruction Paper
• Tissue Paper
• Scissors
• A Big Bowl

Instructions:

1. Rip the tissue paper into 1×1-inch pieces and put them in the big bowl. It needn’t be too tidy, my children loved this part. The only thing you want to keep an eye on is to make sure the pieces stay more or less flat and not end up crumbled by little hands.
2. While the children attack the tissue paper, cut a large heart shaped frames from the construction paper. Carefully stick each frame to a piece of contact paper (sticky side up.) Then cut out the contact paper leaving a 1/2-inch border all around the outside of paper frame.
3. Once the tissue paper is ripped up, give each child (and yourself!) a heart frame (always keeping the sticky side up.) Take a piece of tissue paper and stick it to the contact paper inside the frame. Continue to do this until the entire inside is covered. The pieces can overlap, they will stick as long as part of them in touching the contact paper.
4. When complete, carefully pick up the hearts and stick them to the window, making sure they are flat against it before rubbing around the outside of the frame to stick the 1/2-inch border of contact paper to the window. Stand back and admire!

A couple of things to note, sometimes my children accidently stuck the tissue paper to the contact paper border on the outside, it should peel off easily. I didn’t have any problems at least. If you make your heart border big enough, young children seem to understand pretty easily to keep the tissue paper inside of it. Also, to remove these from your windows, simply peel them off. I have never had contact paper leave a residue on my windows, which is probably why I love the stuff so much.

Since we made Valentines themed ones, we picked red constuction paper and red, pink and white tissue paper. Any colour of either would work though. My son already wants to make some blue, indigo and violet star-shaped ones for his room’s windows, so they are certainly not just a Valentines Day craft.

If you make some of these with your children, I would love to see what you come up with!