One of our favorite things to do in the fall is to make window clings to place on our windows for decoration. There is a little bit of wait time involved, but this project is it rather easy one and a lot of fun. The overall project includes making lead lines with black fabric paint. After allowing that to dry overnight, using colored Elmer’s Glue to color in the templates.

What you’ll need is a

• ziplock bag
• black fabric paint
• several little bottles of Elmer’s Glue
• food coloring
• template of fall designs

Making your Lead Lines

First take the ziplock bag and cut the top off then cut the sides along the seems and the bottom to give you two squares of plastic. Then place your chosen template (I copy and pasted pictures from google image search for coloring sheets). Using the black fabric paint slowly and carefully copy the lines of your template. You want these lines to be thick so they hold the glue when you color them. This is not an easy process, so if you have younger children, you might want to do this the night before for them. I did this for my six-year-old. My twelve-year-old did his own.  These set overnight to dry.

Adding Color to Your Glue

This is also to be done the night before. Place  a few drops of food coloring of your chosen color into the glue. Then take a chopstick or some other item and stir it up a little. I wanted my colors to be pretty fall like, so I put a drop or two of green into the red to make it a darker red. I also made a brown combining red and green a hint of blue and a little of yellow. You can play around with the colors until you get what you want. Stirring in the bottles is pretty difficult so what I usually do throughout the evening and the morning at the next day it’s just turn the glue right side up and upside down so that the color has time to disperse.  Another tip is the pour a little of the glue out so it’s not quite full, add the drops, and then alternate turning up-side-down and right-side-up several times.

Coloring in the Lead Lines

So the lead lines are, and your glue is prepared from the night before. Set your child up on a table with newspaper under their piece of plastic and allow them to color in the lead lines with the glue.  After they have finished coloring in there window clings, this must be allowed to drive at least overnight. If you see any white or particularly dark areas in your window cling, that means that it’s still not dry and needs a little more time. In my experience when fully dry these do not stain the windows at all and leave no marks when taking off. These will last several month,  but they become too brittle to keep over that time period.

Time to peel them off  and place them on your windows!

Some Tips

• The colors of the glue mix easy, so if your child is interested in keeping them pure, take care to stay in the lines
• The glue does tend to pool, so it may need some touch up or to make sure you are using enough glue. It’s a touchy balance there.
• These are very forgiving, so even if the color mixes or the glue pools, they still look good when they dry.

And that’s it! That is how you make our autumn window clings. I would love to see what you make. Tag me @beautyofplay on Instagram or #becauseplayingislearning on Instagram. Or send me a message on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/beautyofplay/.   Enjoy!!!