An Eric Carle craft inspired by ‘Draw Me a Star.’

Over on his website, Eric Carle has an instruction sheet on how to paint tissue paper to create collages in the style of his work.
So we’ve been channeling our inner-Carles and painting lots of tissue paper here.

Watch the how-to video here:

This Eric Carle craft was inspired by his gorgeous book “Draw Me a Star.” We then created tissue paper stars to make a wall hanging.

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What you will need:

We used standard old tissue paper from the Dollar Shop.
We painted with acrylics mixed with a few drops of water.
Use a variety of paintbrushes to get varied strokes on your tissue paper,

How to:

This is a fun, messy activity.
Lay cardboard under your tissue paper before you begin painting.
Eric Carle recommends lifting the tissue paper up off the cardboard regularly. This stops the tissue paper from sticking to the surface.
I had visions that the tissue paper would tear and fall apart. If your paint is diluted slightly with water, it’s surprising how well it takes to the paper. I did this activity with my almost-3-year-old and the tissue paper (mostly) withstood her “vigorous” painting. She did need to be reminded to take gentle strokes.
We did four lots of colours before we put the tissue paper aside to dry.
Make sure you have somewhere to lay it flat.
We kept adding layers of colour over the next few days.

Once your painted tissue paper has dried, you’ll need craft glue, a paintbrush to apply it with and some thick cardboard. This was some packaging from a parcel.
We drew stars based on the diagrams at the back of “Draw Me a Star.”Cut the stars out and cover them in glue.

Place glue-side down onto unpainted side of tissue paper.

Cut the star out.

We then used scraps from our other tissue paper paintings and layered up our stars.

I’ve been holding onto this branch for ages, waiting for the right craft project to come along.
(Hands up if you also hoard craft supplies waiting for the right project to manifest itself?!)
We painted it and strung wool back and forth.

I used sellotape to secure the stars to the wool.
Our painted tissue paper masterpiece now sits in our entrance way.
We had a few stars left over which will be used as gift wrap decorations. (So if your birthday is coming up soon, you have been warned!)