Woven Tissue Paper Suncatcher

Remember the painted newspaper collage inspired by the book by The Carle Museum? Today's project is based on a project from The Carle's blog. Their artwork starts with folia paper (affiliate link) and is on a much larger scale than my tissue paper version. 

Woven Tissue Paper Suncatcher

Materials:

• tissue paper
• foam stamps
• Folk Art acrylic paint
• scissors
• large cardboard tube
• clear tape
• twine

Steps: 

Choose 5+ colors of tissue paper and paint that you like together. Stamp patterns onto the tissue paper. If you don't have stamps, use bottle caps, the end of a cardboard tube, or anything else you can find around the house to make a pattern. Or, you can fingerpaint! 

I did a tone-on-tone and a different stamp for each of the colored tissue papers, then used all of the colors and stamps on white tissue paper (which I didn't end up using for this project). You can do whatever you want for your stamping. There's no right or wrong. 

When the paint is dry, cut the tissue paper into strips. Mine are about 2" wide. 

Tape one end of the strips to the cardboard tube until you have filled the length. I was able to fit 10 strips on my tube. 

Now weave additional strips through the existing strips. The easiest way is to fold back every other strip, lay down the new strip, and then wiggle it into place. Tape the two ends and trim any excess off the edges. 

Repeat the process of folding back alternating strips and taping horizontal strips in place until you near the end. I fit seven strips before I stopped. Cut the ends to make fringe. 

Put a piece of twine through the tube. The easiest way to get the twine through the cardboard tube is to attach a binder clip to one end of the twine, hold the cardboard tube vertically, then drop the binder clip through the tube and let gravity do the work for you. Remove the binder clip and tie the two ends of twine together to make a hanger. 

Here's what it looks like hanging on the wall. 

And here's how it looks on a window where the light can shine through it. 

This was a lot of fun to make and the colors make me happy. Try it yourself!