"Stained Glass" Leaves | While He Was Napping

Last week, Mr Napping was off in Colorado, riding four-wheelers in the frosty morning air and I was wiping boogers off my shoulder and cleaning up the third, no fourth, mess of the morning. It was 8am. You know how there are some days that, no matter what you do, are just going to drag on and on and on… This was one of those days.

Around 10:30, I’d had enough Magic School Bus, Handy Manny and Jake and the Neverland Pirates to last a lifetime – ha, wishful thinking – and decided now was the time to do that project I’d been wanting to do with my kids. “Stained Glass” leaves. I knew Little J (1.5yo) was just a little too young for this project, but hoped he’d sit and watch. Ha. I should’ve known better. This kid doesn’t “sit” for anything. Really, he cries when you put his car seat straps on because he’s “stuck”. Big J (4yo) thought this was cool. The first leaf. After that, he was less impressed, but still checked back in.

STAINED GLASS LEAVES

Materials:

– Old crayons

– Wax paper

– Paper towels

– Iron

– Pen

– Scissors

– Knife

Directions:

– Chop crayons into small pieces. We tried using a cheese grater with our first one. Don’t. It took forever and didn’t work any better than the small pieces of crayons. Pieces should be about the size of the end of a pen.

– Tear off a sheet of wax paper and lay it on top of a paper towel.

– Lay four or five wax pieces of each color on the wax paper. Mix them up. We found that less was more. We did one leaf with red, orange, yellow, green and brown. It made kind of a muddled mess. The one we did with red, yellow and orange turned out pretty neat.

– Lay another piece of wax paper on top of the wax pieces and another paper towel on top of that.

– I had my iron on the “linen” setting from the last time I used it. Heat setting isn’t really going to matter, just make sure it’s a dry heat. No steam! Melt the wax with the iron. Move the iron around to spread the wax across the wax paper. Iron for about 20-30 seconds. Remove the iron and the paper towel. Let cool.

– Use the pen and draw a leaf shape. Cut out with your scissors.

– Use the pen to lightly draw any details on your leaf, such as veins.

– Repeat to create as many leaves as you want. Hang in a window and enjoy the pretty colors! (I just stuck them up with tape.)

This post was written by Krista and originally appeared on While He Was Napping.

“Stained Glass” Leaves

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