Make your own easy sun catchers with coloring pages in less than 15 minutes. Use your favorite coloring pages to create these pretty little summer crafts. This quick craft is a great project to make with a group like classrooms, summer camp or birthday parties.
Make this craft with the whole family or as a group activity! Have the kids color the coloring pages or bring their favorite pre-colored art during the activity.
How to Make Easy Suncatchers with Coloring Pages
The key to creating these pretty suncatchers is the oil. you can use any variety of coloring page or even replace the jar ring with another frame. Applying oil to paper creates more of a translucent look with the paper so the sunlight can shine through the art design.
Make Mason Jar Lid Suncatchers
For this example, I used watercolor paints and markers to color my coloring page before applying the oil. You can use any kind of materials you want, the oil should not smear the color, but you might want to test a small area of your image first.
Materials:
- Colored art page or coloring page – printed on basic white printer paper
- Mason jar lids (Wide Mouth Mason Jar Bands)
- Oil – I used olive oil, but any kind of oil should work
- Cotton balls
- Scissors
- Twine
- Glue – (I use Aleene's Tacky Glue)
- Paper towel – to protect work area and absorb excess oil
Browse flower coloring pages to download and craft with.
Find more printable coloring pages.
Instructions
- Use a cotton ball to apply oil to your art. Make sure to cover all the paper. You don't have to drench the paper, just cover completely. Dab excess oil up with a paper towel or tissue and allow to dry for about 5 minutes.
- Using the mason jar lid, trace a circle around the art and then cut the circle, inside the line so the art fits inside the mason lid.
- Apply a little bit of glue inside the lid and place the art in the lid, art side facing outward.
- Wrap twine around the lid, tie a knot to hold in place. Leave at least 4″ of twine and tie a knot at the top so you can hang your sun catcher.
- That's it!
I colored a standard 8.5×11 coloring page and then made a copy with my printer to shrink it down by 50%.
You can embellish the lid, add glitter to the art or any other fun extras you'd like. I think it would be fun to add strings of beads and bells to create a unique wind chime sun catcher too.
Make a bunch of copies at smaller sizes to create a pile of sun catchers if you'd like.
If you want to make your sun-catcher a little more weather resistant, apply a coat of Mod Podge to both sides of the paper before gluing in place.
Coloring Pages to Use in Your Suncatcher Crafts
Check out my collection of free coloring pages.
You might also like: DIY Outdoor Crafts
Mason Jar Lid Suncatcher FAQs
Does the oil I use matter?
You can use any oil you have on hand. The oil gets absorbed by the fibers of the paper and create the translucent look that allows the light to shine through.
Will the oil go rancid?
Oil and paper are organic materials, so they can break down and go bad. The environment makes a difference too. However, if you store the suncatchers someplace dry, they should last a while.
More Suncatchers You Can Make
There are a ton of fun craft kits you can buy that make beautiful sun catchers. Try some of these project ideas too. Order your kit from Amazon and have fun creating pretty art sun catchers.
Make your own sun catchers using sun catcher markers, here's some to try. Grab some glass markers and create your own sun catcher art.
Here are even more easy Suncatchers craft Ideas
I found these diy sun catcher crafts searching the web, which one is your favorite?
- DIY Sun Catcher Windchime
- Melted Bead Sun Catchers (such a cool DIY project to do with the kids!)
- Butterfly Tissue paper sun catchers
- Nature Suncatchers
Do you have a favorite technique for making your own sun catchers?
I love the idea of picking my own colors and designs and making the whole project yourself. But there's also something really fun about using a pre-set project from a kit and making it your own just by coloring it. Which do you prefer?
Such a fun and unique idea-love it. Def going to try adding some strings of beads and also make a wind chime version.
Thanks!
I love the bead idea, I hope you have fun making all kinds of sun catchers this summer!
Could I trace my coloring page using translucent tracing paper and color it after? Then just cut out whatever portion of the page I want to use for my sun catcher and follow you instructions from there?
I don’t see why not. If you’ve already tried this, I’d love to hear how it turned out.
Hi there, just wondering what type of markers or pencils you used . We are trying this as a Seniors project next week and would like to make sure we have enough coloring pens/pencils/markers for everyone ! Thank in advance.
So sorry for the late reply. I hope your sun catchers turned out amazing! I’ve used a variety of colored pencils for this project.. basic/standard pencils work great! No specific brand. I’ve used Crayola colored pencils as well as fancier art brands and they all seem to work well… pencils tend to work a little better than markers or pens because pencil color doesn’t bleed when the oil is applied.
These are so fun. I came back to this to see how you made these so I can get the stuff to make them with my troop. 🙂
I love the sun catchers with the colouring paper please keep them coming xx
Oh I’m so glad you like this idea. We’ll have to make more with some fun spring pages!
Hello, I’m wondering where you found large Mason jar bands, or even what I could search to find them?
Hi! I found my jars and lids at the local grocery store. However you can also find them on Amazon, here’s an affiliate link: http://amzn.to/2kV9f4o