This craft is something I saw on Martha Stewart's website and thought would be a fun, kid-friendly craft. It turns out that papier mache is kind of tricky when you do it with tissue paper! Not at all as simple as old school newspaper papier mache. But, we prevailed, and ended up with some adorable little jack-o-lanterns to make our dining room more festive for Halloween!
For this craft you'll need some small round balloons (I got a bag of miscellaneous water balloons), some orange and yellow tissue paper cut up into small (one to two inch squares), some white glue and some black paper (not tissue paper though).
Blow up the balloons. You'll want your finished product to be big enough that they fit over your chandelier bulbs generously. Mix some glue with water in a shallow bowl until quite thin, like maybe the consistency of heavy cream. Dip pieces of the cut up tissue paper into the glue mixture and place them all over the balloon, overlapping the tissue, so no balloon peeks out (except at the base around the balloon's knot. Leave that area bare for the extraction of the popped balloon later on.) The trick here is that you want to thoroughly cover the balloon with tissue paper, but you also don't want too many layers of paper, since you'll want lots of light to shine through! Don't worry if you have problems with the tissue tearing, wrinkling, etc. It won't really matter to the finished product.
Once your balloons are all covered with tissue, place them on a cooling rack to dry. This takes time. A long time. Like maybe a day, or more, if your weather is cool or damp. When they are thoroughly dry they'll feel slightly hard and crispy. Now is the time to add faces. Martha's website had a template for a cute little face, but we just winged it. In fact, L. was very proud of the shapes she cut out for eyes, nose, mouth, etc. and even J. got in on the shape cutting action. We then glued the face shapes on (remembering that the bottom of the balloon, where the knot is, will be the bottom of your shade as well). Once the faces were completely dry, we popped the balloons, pulled them out through the hole in the bottom of the shade, and popped them on our chandelier. The children were enchanted with the finished result!
Fire Hazard Disclaimer - I don't know how fire safe these little beauties are. To be safe, I would not use them with a bulb higher than 40 watts, and even at 25 - 40 watts, I'd be inclined to keep a close eye on them.
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