Faux Stained Glass from a Coloring Book

As I mentioned in my Craft and Hobby Association Mega Show wrap-up post, I attended the Blogger Networking Event hosted by Prime Publishing and FaveCrafts. This event brings together craft bloggers and the manufacturers who want to work with craft bloggers. This year's companies included:

Beadalon  Design Master  Fairfield  FloraCraft  Leisure Arts  Michaels  Plaid Enterprises

Premier Yarns  Sakura  Simplicity  Sizzix  Spinrite  Testors  Therm O Web

Some of the manufacturers had products with them to give to us as we visited their table. Such was the case with Leisure Arts. They are right on trend with the current coloring book craze! They had samples of their various coloring books for us to take. My favorite was this one, Art of Coloring Animals.

I like coloring books and always have. While I think it's great that coloring books are so popular right now, particularly for adults, one of the problems with everyone jumping on the bandwagon is that many aren't doing it correctly. Some of the biggest sins I see over and over as I thumb through coloring books? Cheap papers that bleed through to the next page, back-to-back printing, and pages that can't be easily removed. Ugh. Fortunately, Leisure Arts is doing it right. The pages in the coloring books are thick and printed on only a single side. They are perforated to make it easy to remove the page. For my first project from the book, I decided to do something I haven't done since elementary school.

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Faux Stained Glass

Materials: coloring page, something to color with, newspaper or newsprint, a cotton ball or cotton pad, vegetable oil, and tape.

Start by coloring your design. I chose butterflies and colored them in with my Prismacolor markers. I left the background blank.

My design had three butterflies. I chose to cut them apart to make three smaller projects rather than one large one. 

Turn your design upside down on the newsprint. Moisten the cotton with the oil (moist, not dripping). Rub the backside of the design. You'll see the colors pop and the black lines begin to show through. Continue until the whole paper has been rubbed with oil. Turn it right-side up on a clean spot on the newsprint to allow any excess oil to be absorbed. 

Tape the design to a window and enjoy! When the sun shines through, it looks just like stained glass.

What do you think? If you're into the coloring book craze, give it a try! Click the image below to browse through all the coloring books that Leisure Arts has to offer. This is an affiliate link; I will receive a small portion of any sales made through this link.