Stained glass pumpkin

Halloween is bright and sunny so celebrate it in style by adding these fantastic window decorations to the front of house. Kids love seeing their art work displayed so show the whole neighbourhood their brilliance.

What you need:

• yellow and orange tissue paper or cellophane
• 40cm x 40cm clear plastic contact (book covering)
• black construction card
• scissors
• pen
• glue stick

Number of players:
1+

Activity:

Tear tissue paper into strips, then cut or tear into squares.

Scissors may be needed if using cellophane.

Peel back half of the backing from your clear contact leaving the other half still protected.

Fold over the backing to keep out of the way.

Place tissue paper onto the sticky side of the contact, making about a 20cm circle.

Be sure to alternate colours and keep them close together. Overlapping is fine and can be very pretty!

Carefully peel the backing off the other side of the contact, then fold that contact over onto the exposed tissue paper pieces, sandwiching them between the contact.

Press out any air bubbles – you may need to pierce some with a pin, so adult supervision may be required here.

Trim any overlapping contact off.

Fold construction card in half, and cut out a simple pumpkin-shaped frame.

Don’t forget, pumpkins come in lots of shapes and sizes, so you don’t have to be too precise!

This should yield two identical pumpkins because the construction card was folded.

Make sure your frame is at least 3cm wide.

Place one pumpkin frame onto the decorated contact, and trace around the pumpkin with a pen.

Cut out your traced shape with scissors trimming the contact about ½cm smaller than your tracing.

Cover one pumpkin frame with glue, then place the decorated contact onto the pumpkin, pressing down to secure. Then glue the second pumpkin frame on top to finish your stained glass pumpkin!

Secure onto a sunny window using blu-tac or double-sided tape (see note).

Notes:

• Glue the ends of a piece of looped string between the tops of your pumpkin frames so you can hang it.
• Suction cup hangers can be found at your local craft supply store, usually in multi-packs. These are great for hanging your stained glass creations in windows without leaving messy marks on the glass.
• Get creative, and use lots of different coloured tissue paper and different shapes for your frames. The sky’s the limit!
• Save the tissue paper and cellophane from birthday and Christmas gifts to recycle in your craft projects.