Valentine's Day Craft

I know it's after Valentine's Day but I wanted to show you this craft we did.  I had wanted to do this at N2's preschool party but the teacher nixed liquid starch because she didn't want to have to use smocks.  I don't think my kids got any liquid starch on them but oh well.  I was also going to do a craft a preschool that needed lots of squares of tissue paper and we nixed that one as well after I had already cut up the squares.  So I was left with a TON of little tissue paper squares.  I had done this craft with my students and have been wanting to do it with N2.

Supplies:
tissue paper, cut up into small squares (1 inch)
liquid starch
wax paper
masking tape
paint brush

Tear off whatever size wax paper you would like to have.  Tape that to the table.  Then have your child brush liquid starch on the wax paper and put tissue paper squares on top of where they put liquid starch.  It's best to work in small areas (don't put liquid starch over the whole piece of wax paper).

After sticking on the tissue paper, you want to go over it with more liquid starch.  You don't want to use TOO much or you'll bunch up the tissue paper.  A light hand is best.  Repeat this process until the wax paper is full (or enough of the paper is full so that you can cut out your desired shape).  Put tissue paper on top of tissue paper.  You do want to have 2-3 layers of overlapping tissue paper and you want to make sure that you don't have holes between the tissue paper squares.

Your wax paper and tissue paper will be quite damp.  Just a warning, your table will be wet.  Put this somewhere to dry.  Once it is dry (we made ours in the morning and they were dry by late afternoon), you can gently peel the wax paper off.  You may have difficulty with the edges as it may only have 1 layer but it can be peeled off!   Once you peel the wax paper off, you can cut it into whatever shape you would like. You could use sharpie to draw your shape on the wax paper and cut it before peeling it off but then it might be harder to peel.  I cut mine into hearts for Valentine's Day.  I did butterflies with my class at school.  You could do Easter eggs for Easter.

I hope that is clear enough!