As the cold turns to warm days, I get so excited to be outside, but there are always those rainy days where I’m not exactly sure what to do—yes, I love a good movie day, but even that can be short-lived at my house. So I found a simple, easy, homemade window cling to do on a rainy day.
I love doing crafts, and so does my 3-year-old. She loves coloring and cutting but don’t even get my started on GLUE. This girl LOVES glue. When I tell her we’re going to do a craft, she immediately asks, “are we going to glue things?!” Yes—with this window cling craft, you’re going to glue until your heart’s content!
I saw this idea on Pinterest to make window clings, but it wanted me to get contact paper and some other stuff that I did not have and wasn’t interested in buying. So I smashed about five different Pinterest ideas together for the butterfly window cling.
Here’s what you need for the window cling:
- Liquid glue (Elmer’s is what I used)
- Paintbrush (small, watercolor paintbrushes work well)
- Cut up scraps of tissue paper in whatever colors you want
- One sheet of printer paper (cardstock does not work well)
- One piece of construction paper in the outline of whatever shape you want (I did a butterfly, but this would be great for crosses, flowers, circles—whatever!)
What to do:
- Cut up the pieces of tissue paper. They don’t need to be identical, and a little goes a LONG way. I cut up mine into about ½ inch square(ish) shapes. This is a great way to use up some of the super crinkled tissue paper you saved from your baby shower six years ago! You can even have your kid(s) cut the shapes to get them more involved.
- Cut out the window cling design you are planning to make. You’ll want just to do the outline of the shape. Again, I made a butterfly because we were reading the Hungry Caterpillar and wanted to do something related to the book. I also used a Cricut to cut out the design, but you do NOT have to do that. Try to make the shape be almost a full sheet of paper so that you can use up a lot of the tissue paper.
- Dilute the liquid glue to make it easy to “paint” on the tissue paper. I did a 1:1 ratio glue to water. Again, a little goes a long way, and don’t worry about getting out the measuring cups. Just put some glue in a paper cup and mix it in some water.
- Take the printer paper and paint on a little of the diluted glue. Put on a piece of tissue paper. Paint over the tissue paper with the glue. Repeat! Just keep putting glue down and slapping on some cut tissue paper all over the printer paper. The paper is going to get really wet, and that’s ok (you may want to put down something under the paper, but I was working on a table that easily wipes up—honestly, this was not too messy for us). This method will make your paper look like stained glass (toddler style!).
- Let it dry. Depending on how rambunctious your kid is with the glue, this could take some time. Ha!
- Once the paper with the glued tissue paper is dry, take the cut-out construction paper butterfly (or whatever window cling shape you went with) and glue it down on the tissue paper.
- Cut around the shape of the construction paper design and hang on a window for all to marvel!
This window cling craft was one of my daughter’s favorites that I pieced together during the quarantine.
She was busy and occupied for quite some time, carefully gluing down all the tissue paper scraps.
We’ll for sure be making more window clings! The best part is they can be easily adaptable to seasons, holidays, and kids’ interests because you can just change out the tissue paper colors and shape of the construction paper cut-out. For Grandparent’s Day, they will be getting some flowers, for fall, I’ll be making some orange pumpkins, and at Christmas time, we’ll be making trees and ornaments for all of our windows.
