We ditched the original snowflake activity we had on the the advent calendar and tried something new at the last minute. Snowflake prints using bleeding tissue paper! We did this at the beginning of the month and I'm just getting around to posting about this, mostly because I'm not so crazy about the photos I took. But I think the activity is really cool, so I'm going to post anyway.
- First we cut out our snowflakes.
- Then we set a tissue paper snowflake on a sheet of watercolor paper (any heavier paper would work) and used a spray bottle of water to wet it evenly.
- We also used a foam brush to press the wet tissue paper down, so that as much of the snowflake was in contact with the paper as possible.
- Then we let the snowflake dry on the paper before removing it. Not necessary, but we wanted as much color transfer as possible.
Here's one of Maia's snowflakes, currently wet and transferring its color to the paper beneath.
And here's one of her snowflake prints (on the left) after the tissue paper was removed as well as one of mine.
The trick is to get the tissue paper thoroughly and evenly wet, but not so wet that the color dissolves in a puddle all over the paper.
We had a lot of fun with this and Maia has requested to do it again. She's been cutting snowflakes like crazy lately, from everything she can think of. Colored construction paper, parchment paper, tissue paper, paper bags. She uses her regular scissors and her zig-zag scissors. She makes tiny snowflakes and big snowflakes. The kid is into snowflakes!
