These super stained glass cross pictures are the perfect Easter or Sunday School craft, look beautiful on display, and can be adapted for a range of ages.
I have always loved the effect of stained glass windows and when my kids were younger we often tried to create our own stained glass window effect with paintings. The idea is very simple but a lot of fun and I think you end up with some stunning pictures.
Two of our finished stained glass cross pictures
You create the effect of the satined glass panes by using either black glue or black puffy paint. Outline your template (we used crosses) and then create the stained glass effect by drawing lines over the page. We have various cross templates you can use as a starting point here. These lines can be random, circular or even in a pattern. The aim is just to divide your page into smaller sections so it looks like the picture is created using smaller sections.
Creating an outline for our picture
A finished outline with simple diagonal stained glass panels
Experimenting with random and circular stained glass panels for variety!
You must let you black glue or black puffy paint dry! I have messed up a few of the kids' pictures by not letting them dry properly and the black puffy paint really does smudge and create a big mess if it is still wet! So just to be on the safe side I tend to leave ours to dry overnight.
Then you need to decide what medium you are going to use to “colour” in the glass sections of your picture. In the past we have always used our watercolour paints. I just liked using the combination of the black puffy paint with our paints.
Painting a stained glass cross picture with watercolours
We also try to think carefully about the colours, tending to keep the colours we use for the main item (the cross) different to the colours used for the background. We often end up going for warm colours verses cold colours, but you could use any combination.
A cool background and warm cross on this picture
Using contrasting pinks and purples for the cross in this stained glass picture
As much as I love the combination of using the watercolour paints with the puffy paint outlines, I decided to try a few other mediums just to give some examples for anyone who may not have watercolour paints available.
We tried with some watercolour pencils – my kids always enjoyed the idea of watercolour pencils and they do give a great effect.
Using watercolour pencils to "paint" this picture
This is the dramatic and effective result!
We also tried one with our felt tip pens (we used sharpies) and I must admit I really like how bright and colourful this one turned out. I also really like the different effect that you get with curved lines instead of straight lines.
Exerimenting with circles and sharpies
And, just to mix things up a bit, we did one with the cross in cool colours and the background in warm colours.
A cross with warm background and cool foreground
I definitely think the sharpies work well with this!
And then just because I happened to spot our oil pastels I had a go at an oil pastel version. I would not normally have tried oil pastels with this just because I find they are not the best for colouring in smaller sections or corners, so for our oil pastel picture I used a version with larger sections.
Using oil pastels with a simple stained glass cross outline
I liked how it turned out. When my kids were really young they prefered using oil pastels to normal colouring pencils so I definitely think this could be an oil pastel activity for younger kids.
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 10 and 12. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.
