Beautiful, stained glass effect hearts with simple materials make for a beautiful Valentine's Day decorations! Everyone from toddlers to adults can make them easily.
You will need:
Tissue paper in shades of pink, red and purple
A roll of sticky back plastic (also known as contact paper.) This is available in stationers, art shops and some newsagents
Sellotape
Scissors
What to do:
1. Tear up the tissue paper into little pieces of any shape. This is great for your child's fine motor skills and plenty of fun to do! The torn edges are very pretty and look much more effective than the straight edges of being cut with scissors, so keep it simple!
2. Peel back about half of the stick-back plastic and tape the corners of it, sticky side up, onto a table top. This is quite tricky to do and needs to be done slowly!
3. As soon as it is secured, allow your child to simply stick the tissue paper pieces all over it, smoothing them down to make sure that they stick well. Continue to add different shades of similar colours so that they overlap and begin to cover the whole plastic, without leaving any gaps. You can add in other types of paper or even glitter too, to create whatever final effect you desire.
4. When it is covered, fold the second half of the sticky-back plastic directly over the top to seal the picture, and smooth out any bubbles and wrinkles with a flat hand. Make sure the top and bottom are stuck firmly together all the way across so that no pieces will fall out.
5. Use some scissors to cut out heart shapes, of various sizes to complete the stained glass heart pictures. Attach them to the window with blu-tac or sellotape, where the sun will shine through them and make the colours look absolutely beautiful!
6. Alternatively, you could thread some cotton through some holes punched in the top of the hearts and hang them like a mobile or as a garland to decorate a room.
Sit back and enjoy a little bit of bright and joyful on these dreary winter days!
And of course, you don't need to stick to heart shapes or reds and pinks - for different occasions you can try different shapes and sizes.