Make: Stained Glass Rainbow Craft

A fun “stained glass” craft that is perfect for an at-home birthday party or quelling those “there’s nothing to do” cries from the kiddos.

When we celebrated Madeline’s birthday earlier this year, she chose to eschew a big party and, instead, wanted to go into the city with two of her friends for the day. Which I thought was an awesome idea (you can check out where we ate lunch here). But with that big heart of hers, and having many good friends, she didn’t want any of them to feel left out, so we fixed that by having a low-key party at home.

You know … we went old school.

And, of course, if you know my daughter, it should come as no surprise to you that she wanted a rainbow themed party.

I mean, she IS my kid after all.

Which is how I found myself researching rainbow-themed craft ideas that we could do.

One of the crafts we made was one that we have made before, these hanging rainbows. Ours has long since faded, so it was the perfect excuse to get a new one hanging from our back door, and I still love it now just as much as I did then.

For the second craft, we made Stained Glass Rainbows. I love this one because it’s super simple, and requires little direction from me. I gave the girls the supplies, a brief how-to, and away they went.

Which is good since it was me by myself with 12 girls.

The only supplies you need are tissue paper, glue, and wax paper, so this is a very inexpensive craft, and you can totally customize it to do anything you want. It doesn’t have to be just rainbows. Make some colorful butterflies. Or something red-themed for Valentine’s Day or green for St. Patrick’s Day. Use orange, black, and white and do pumpkins for Halloween. Varying shades of blues and whites for the ocean. You could even do a whole scene with grass, sky, and the sun. We did a similar craft for my niece’s birthday two years ago and went with a snowflake theme. You are only limited by your imagination.

To keep clean-up easy, I bought plastic tablecloths from the dollar store, so once we were done crafting, I just scooped up the tablecloth and in the garbage it went, complete with all the little scraps of paper. I also did the same when we did the other craft – the tablecloth protected my table from the girls’ painting and clean-up was a breeze.

To make this craft, cut up the pieces of tissue paper that you will be using first. Lay a piece of wax paper down flat and put glue on it in the shape that you want to create (make sure to use glue that will dry clear). Add the tissue paper on top of the glue. Once all your tissue paper is in place, take a second piece of wax paper, put glue on it, and then lay it down on top of your tissue paper (glue side down first) and press your hand down over the wax paper to affix the two pieces together and press out any air bubbles.

*I precut all the wax paper pieces ahead of time and made them larger than their rainbows would be so they could write their names on them so they didn’t get mixed up. Once they got home, they could trim the wax paper so they ended up with just the rainbow shape.

And once I find where Madeline put hers, I can add a picture of the finished product, but thankfully I at least have these in-process shots.

Cute and cheerful craft that made for a fun afternoon.