Cut Contact Paper Collages: Fun And Practically Mess Free!

Wouldn't you like to make some works of art like these? Me too, in fact I had to control myself from grabbing all those little pieces away from my kids and making something myself! The other evening before dinner I was in need of an activity that would allow me to prepare a meal and keep my young children involved at the same time. 

I wracked my brain for a mess-free project (there are good times for messy projects and not so good times for  messy projects!) that would be new and different and came up with this. I whipped out the pieces of glossy contact paper I'd purchased for something else, some cereal boxes (we save these, they're great to have on hand) and scissors for me. I quickly folded pieces of contact paper so that I could cut out many shapes in one step, and presented the kids with small piles of candles, flames, and dreidels. Later we realized that the scraps made great horizontal borders! Wicks were applied with a pen, which was then used for a few doodles here and there. And voila, some Chanukah pictures were born! 

You'll Need:

• shiny contact paper in a few colors: make sure it's good quality contact paper so that the kids can remove the backing without your help (Note to residents of the Holy Land: "tepet" won't work well with little kids as it's too difficult to remove the paper backing) Also the thick good quality contact paper can be repositioned without tearing the cardboard base, so it works well as far as correcting mistakes!
• a "canvas" of some sort—big pieces of light weight cardboard, like a cereal box as shown here work well.
• sharp scissors for cutting multiple layers of contact paper, older kids can of course do this themselves
• a theme is helpful in terms of getting the kids interested, if Chanukah isn't up your alley try something else!

Enjoy and please take a few moments to leave a comment! And if you would be so kind, click on the stumble it button on the right to help me spread the word!