I finally mustered up the courage to make a big mess with the boys in light of St. Patrick’s Day. After seeing the Valentine Suncatchers from my favorite art blog by that artist woman, I started thinking of how we could make something similar for St. Patrick’s Day, and voila!
Supplies
- paper towel or toilet paper tubes
- tempera paints
- paintbrush
- water
- coffee filters
- scissors
- needle and thread
Instructions
- Cut each toilet paper tube into eighths (enough for two shamrocks) or twentieths in the case of paper towel tubes. The tube will naturally collapse, making two creases.
- Flip one of the creases inside out to make a “heart,” which will become a leaf for the shamrock. Repeat twice for two more leaves.
- Squeeze one piece (per shamrock) and glue closed for the stem.
- We tried this a couple of ways – cutting the tubes to size first and then painting, and vice versa. The easiest method was to cut the tubes in half (in the case of toilet paper tubes) or in fourths (in the case of paper towel tubes) before painting, which minimizes the amount of time and mess.
- Next we soaked our coffee filters in water and then painted them light green, dark green, and black to have a little variety. (We’ve found that the coffee filters are actually much stronger than tissue paper, though tissue paper would look very beautiful as well.)
- And then we painted our toilet paper tube pieces.
- After letting the coffee filters dry, we glued the edges of the toilet paper tubes together in the form of a shamrock, also putting a thin layer of glue on the back side before letting them dry on top of the painted coffee filters. This is also a good time to glue on the stem by wedging it between the shamrock leaves.
- Then we waited for them all to dry.
- We left some of the tubes unpainted to provide a little variety. After allowing to dry, we trimmed the excess filter away from the shamrocks. There are a number of crafts that can be made from these shamrocks, though our favorite was the suncatcher. We glued some of the finished shamrocks together and then used a needle to thread with some string through the filter to hang as a suncatcher.
Some other similar projects that helped us with this idea were the Poinsettia Project and Paper Roll Shamrocks.
For something to read aloud as the kids paint, this St. Patrick’s Day Overview. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!