Make tissue paper stained glass

This is Jen, from SewnNatural (you can also check out our blog here to see behind the scenes). Today's Thursday tutorial is a beautiful craft you can do yourself or with your children (far more fun!) I saw this idea on Artful Parent for using tissue paper to create a child's stained glass window, and I was thoroughly impressed.

What a fantastic little tutorial. I did tweak it, since I won't buy or use liquid starch because most (all?) commercial brands have formaldehyde (and other noxious stuff) in them. So I decided to try to make my own "liquid starch". You need a gooey starchy liquid to apply as a sort of glue before, and during the process.

Here is what I made up. I brought 3/4 cup of water to a rolling boil. Meanwhile, I mixed 1 tbsp of cornstarch (which is heavily processed, but this is an art project, not a muffin I decided) into 1/4 cup of cold water. I stirred this cornstarch+water until it was all dissolved. When my stovetop water began to boil, I added in this cornstarch liquid, and stirred for a minute or two, then took it off the heat to cool. I put it in a glass mason jar, and used a regular art paintbrush with it. It worked wonderfully!



To start your stained glass project with your child, take a piece of waxed paper, and tape the corners to your work surface so it won't easily move and will stay flat as it dries (which can take a number of hours at least).

Then rip up pieces of tissue paper - the more colors, the better.



Next, using a brush, apply a thin coat of the homemade liquid starch onto the waxed paper.



Then take the tissue paper pieces and begin applying them, carefully patting each one down. In our first experiment, we brushed some of the liquid starch onto each piece as we applied it, but we found that added up to far too much starch - a gooey mess that wasn't necessary for "gluing" and that took far too long to dry.



If the paper gets dry during the process, brush some more on, and then one nice coat at the end seemed to do the trick.



Once it's dry, it can be hung up in a window, and will surely shime some sweet rainbow light into your home.