Paper “Stained Glass” Ornaments

At the preschool holiday party on Saturday, we had a number of crafts and games for the kids and their parents. One of the cutest crafts that we did was a "stained glass" ornament made out of paper. One of my committee members, Stacy (who specifically asked me not to give her credit for this, so of course, I am!), had seen a variation on this craft at a Halloween party and she adapted it for Christmas ornaments.

Here is what you need:


- Construction paper (we used red, white & green)
- Clear contact paper (each ornament used two 3"-4" squares)
- Tissue paper (we used red & green -- $1 for a bunch at the dollar store!)
- Scissors
- Glue stick
- Hole punch
- Curling ribbon, yarn, string, etc.

We folded a piece of construction paper into quarters, and then drew half of an open, circular ornament on one side of the folder paper (see photo).


Then we cut along the lines and this gave us 2 circles connected by a "tab" at the top.


We took a few small squares of the tissue paper and laid those on the sticky side of one of the 3" squares of contact paper (sorry, I don't have any of that leftover to show!). Then we covered that with the other piece of contact paper – so the tissue paper squares are sandwiched in between the two squares.

We placed the contact paper in between the two "rings" of the ornament and then used the glue stick to glue the entire thing closed. You may need to trim the corners of the contact paper off, if they are sticking out from the ornament.

Then we punched a hole in the top of the ornament and tied some curling ribbon through the hole to make a hanger.


This is how the craft table looked at the end of the party…


Here is one of the finished ornaments:


And here is how cute it looks on our Christmas tree!


I love this craft because it was simple to do – the parents did help the little ones, but my 9-year-old made one all on her own – super cute, and you can take this idea and use it for all sorts of things! You can use any colors you want to make a tree ornament, or a cute window decoration! Imagine making one in an egg shape with brightly colored tissues and decorate your windows for Easter! As Stacy saw at the Halloween party, they made them into jack o'lantern decorations. You could even take this idea and put one of your children's small school pictures in the middle – what a great ornament for the grandparents' trees! Hmm… I may have to try that for this Christmas!