Christmas and Winter Window Clings

Decorating for Christmas or winter does not need to be expensive or difficult. It can be an easy process that the entire family can help with. You can make your very own window clings that will be useful from year to year in a number of different ways.

The first step in any successful Christmas craft project is to gather your materials.

For this project you will need the following:

Liquid Translucent Sculpey Polymer Clay

Alcohol ink (I prefer Adirondack) in your favorite Christmas colors.

A small brush you have no problems with disposing of, or using for this specific craft

Snowflake templates or coloring pages.

Glitter

Small (lidded) watercolor paint tubs

Toothpicks

A bowl of luke-warm water

The first step is to pour a small amount of liquid Sculpey into each of the tubs. Fill them approximately 4/5 of the way full with your Sculpey. Add a few drops of alcohol ink and stir thoroughly with a toothpick. To get a deeper or more vibrant color, add a few drops of alcohol ink, stir, and repeat until you get the exact color that you will need. Make sure that these are mixed so that it is without streaks in each color. Make sure that you use one toothpick per color so that you do not cross-contaminate your colors (unless of course you are looking for a different color). Add small amounts of glitter until you get the sparkle that you are looking for. This may require some trial and error to get the right amount of sparkle.

After these have been thoroughly mixed, print out your snowflakes in different sizes. You can use a laser printer or ink jet, but I find a laser printer to be far more economical, especially with toner cartridge refills. Alternatively, you can use a magic marker to draw your snowflakes onto parchment paper for a slightly cleaner project.

Now you can paint your favorite snowflakes, or Christmas or winter scenes. I have been very successful with a manger scene. Make sure that you use plain translucent (or black) on the lines so that the pieces of your scene or stars stay together. Alternatively, you can paint each piece separately, and then assemble them on your window or mirror.

Allow your "paint" to dry completely.

When the clings have been dried completely, peel the paper off of the snowflakes. There will be some paper residue, but you can use the bowl of water, and rub the backs of your window clings until all of the residue is gone. If you used parchment or waxed paper, you can just peel them off of the paper.

Now you can place your window clings onto clean windows, and they will stay for the whole Christmas or Winter season. I have found that thinner pieces usually stay on windows longer.

If they do fall off, you can just rinse them in the sink, and stick them back on when they are dry.