Winter Suncatchers – Holiday Fun for the Whole Family

My favorite days in the winter are those when the sky is a clear, bright blue and the sun is shining. On those days the temperature isn’t much of a concern because it’s just so pretty out. But let’s face it. Sometimes, no matter how pretty the sky is, it’s just too cold to spend time outside. So bring the best of the outdoors, in!

Suncatchers can really make the indoors sparkle with that natural sunlight.  Plus, they are so versatile. My son and I paint them together and then attach them to holiday gifts. My son loves giving out these presents, bragging that he painted the attached suncatcher just for that person.  Some of our friends hang the suncatchers on their Christmas trees and then after the holidays put them up in bright windows so they can enjoy them all year long.

We don’t even carve out a ton of extra time to paint our suncatchers. It becomes part of our holiday preparations. We do have one special tradition though: when we know we are going to get snow, we pull out some special designs and paint them the night before so that they are ready to glitter against all of the pretty fresh snow.

What do you do with your suncatchers?

Thanksgiving Reflections

Our Thanksgiving holiday was a wonderful time for us to spend with our families and think about all of the wonderful people and opportunities in our lives. It also reminded us what a pleasure it is for us to craft and to share our crafts with others.

Crafting is so much more than just creating decorations or gifts. It’s a time to be creative and bond with friends and family. And in one special case, it was a time to learn a new culture and share some of our own.

A few summers ago we sent Kelly’s suncatchers with the Monaghan Baptist Church on their mission trip to Jamaica. We paint suncatchers all the time. We get excited by the new designs and love to get creative with them. But even we weren’t prepared for the reaction we got. 

The people our friends at Monaghan Baptist visited had never seen anything like our suncatchers before. They took excitement to a new level. And we got to see a craft we do every day through fresh eyes.

The Monaghan Baptist was a success on many levels. We are so glad we got to be a part of it.

Designer Craft Tip

Designer Susan Philpott loves experimenting with her craft supplies. Here is a little something she figured out after painting a few suncatchers.

Craft Tip for Different Ways to Use Suncatcher Stain

Did you know Suncatcher stain can be used on other surfaces than our Kelly's Suncatchers?  Suncatcher stain can be used on clear acrylic rhinestones or  beads in a variety of craft projects.

Stay tuned for to this blog for craft projects like making jewelry or rhinestones using suncatchers stain! 

Girl Scouts Get Crafty with Kelly's Suncatchers

Recently a Hobby Town USA store in Cumming, Georgia, hosted a local Girl Scout Troop for a day of crafting. What did the girls do? They painted suncatchers, of course! Here's Keith Pruitt's article about the event from Hobby Merchandiser magazine.

Kelly’s Crafts offers several lines of craft projects that provide inspiration, creative fun and a bit of education while entertaining kids of all ages. One of its lines is Suncatchers. These are a type of stained glass window decoration made to “catch the sun” and allow the sunlight to bring out the brilliance of the colors and shapes. Kelly’s Crafts’ Suncatcher Kits are made of clear plastic and include brushes and transparent liquid stains that allow kids and adults to create beautiful craft art pieces to hang in their windows.

Recently the HobbyTown USA store in Cumming, Georgia, hosted a craft workshop for the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta, Troop 10881, in which the girls painted Kelly’s Crafts Suncatchers. With the wide variety of Suncatchers available, each girl had the opportunity to paint several different ones. They were able to choose from animals, cartoon characters, fairies, sea creatures, pirate paraphernalia and 3-D butterflies.

Girl Scouts is an organization that enables girls and young women to exercise their talents, gain new skills in leadership and practical applications and have fun during the process. There are several types of projects that Girl Scouts perform, including outdoor activities like canoeing and horseback riding, as well as various forms of arts and crafts. Kelly’s Crafts Suncatchers were a natural fit for their arts and crafts endeavors.

On a sunny spring afternoon, Troop 10881 arrived at Hobbytown USA ready to have some fun and promptly went to work. As the girls began to paint the Suncatchers, their conversation varied from an obstacle course the girls had recently completed to “World Thinking Day,” a festival about globalization and world cultures. They also discussed the Suncatchers, deciding which colors to use on the different designs and what they wanted to do with them after they had finished. They considered donating them to the pediatric wing at the local hospital or perhaps to the convalescent home to brighten up the rooms of the elderly patients living there.

Kelly’s Crafts Suncatcher Kits each include multiple containers of paint in various colors, allowing mixing and matching of colors on the various pieces. These kits, many containing multiple Suncatchers, make a workshop like this simple, inexpensive and easy to perform in any hobby shop. The Suncatcher Kits also make an excellent choice of afternoon or evening activity for any family at home. Obviously, the young ladies of Troop 10881 had a blast painting the Kelly’s Crafts Suncatchers, and it was great fun watching them.

Race Car Project Idea

Using some wood from Lara's Crafts, some suncatcher stain from Kelly's Crafts, and felt from CPE, you can turn them into a "speed defying" race car that will entertain children for hours.  They are large enough to fit several different kinds of drivers!

Find out how to make one now!

Safari Mobile

Bring the beauty of our Kelly's Crafts Suncatchers and Lara's Crafts Wood & Felt Characters together in perfect harmony with our Safari Theme Mobile.  

This is an especially fun project for big brothers and big sisters to help work on to welcome their new sibling!

Find out how to make it here! 

ABC Blocks Project

This is a fun craft that can be done in sync with your child's classroom or for a fun learning experience anytime!

My niece had a blast spelling out all the different words she knew when she say these laying around house!

Get instructions for the ABC Blocks here!

Creative Wood Staining Methods

While out shopping yesterday, I stumbled across the Chartpak Woodcrafter's Marker.  My fellow co-workers told me that these have been around for awhile but they were new to me and I had a lot of fun enhancing the beauty of our natural unfinished wood using these easy to handle wood stain pens!

During this experiment, I also discovered that our Kelly's Crafts glass stain is also a great way to enhance the natural wood look but by adding a little bit of color.  This was just with a simple one coat of our turquoise stain pen!

I can't wait to incorporate this into more of our project ideas!  I love being able to keep the wood grain and add an extra dimension to my crafts.  I hope it is as inspiring to you as it is to me!

3 Simple Steps Never Looked So Good!

Kelly's Crafts recently added on to their already extensive mix of suncatchers recently with a new line called Color Clings. They are a fun, new way to add some fun to your windows!

All you have to do is three simple steps and you are ready to light up your house with beautiful scenes from fairies to bugs. You just have to Stain, Peel, and Cling! My niece loves the whimsical design of the characters and has spent plenty of afternoons telling me stories about them as they flutter about different rooms in the house. It is a great project that keeps giving after it is done.