Snowflake stained-glass windows

My hubby and I made a New Year's resolution (of sorts) this year - to not spend our time after having dinner crashing out on the settee in front of the TV. It's so easy when you have been working all day (as is the case with hubby) or looking after two demanding children all day (as is the case with me) to just put your feet up and not do an awful lot. This is fine on occasions but we wanted to try and get away from this and use the time between tea and bed to do something more meaningful with our little ones instead. The TV/iPad now doesn't come on until just before bed, if at all.

This time of day can be quite tricky, as it's usually then that our toddler starts to become really tired (particularly if he has been at nursery that day). It also tends to be the time at which Isla is the most unsettled. But it's also the only family time we have during the working week and on the days that Tommy attends nursery. We fill the hour we do all sorts of activities: writing, drawing, painting, baking, arts and crafts, board games, jigsaw puzzles and role play. Whatever we do, we try to make it a relatively quiet, focused activity, so as not to get Tommy too excited before bedtime! 

One of our most recent activities was making a snowflake stained-glass window. As Tommy was at nursery that day, I prepared all the materials beforehand, so that he could get on with it straight away once he got home. If you're going to have a go at it, you need contact paper/sticky-backed plastic, black card, snowflakes cut out of card/paper, scissors, glue and squares of tissue paper in wintery colours. 

We made A3-sized windows, as two of them would fill Tommy's bedroom window nicely. To start with, I cut some snowflakes out of white paper using a template I found on the Internet. Then I cut the inside out of my 'windows' leaving just the border (1-2cm thick). I also cut up some tissue paper squares so that they were ready to use. 

The next step is to peel off the backing of the sticky-backed plastic and very simply stick the tissue paper squares onto the plastic, overlapping them to create a range of different shades of colour. Continue until all the plastic is covered with tissue paper and lay the black outline over the top to make sure no gaps are left.

Finally, use glue to stick the snowflake shapes onto the design, stick the window outline on top and then cut off the excess plastic. You might want to then cover the whole thing in another layer of plastic but we left it there. 

We are so pleased with the finished result! These look lovely on Tommy's bedroom window!