Check out this simple and beautiful paper bag luminary! This is an easy summer craft for kids and is the perfect decoration for your home or yard. You can use pressed flowers or fresh pieces of nature straight from the garden!
It’s officially summer vacation and after a wild school year filled with distance learning, I am looking forward to lazy days and some simple nature crafts! I thought this paper bag luminary would the perfect summer solstice craft, but it would be fun to try any summer day.
Ready to give it a try!? Here’s what you’ll need..
Supplies:
- Flowers- If you don’t currently have flowers in your yard, you can purchase pressed pieces of nature from Amazon.
- Paper bag and candles- You can go one of two routes here: 1. Regular paper bag with flameless candle or 2. Flame resistant luminary bags with real candles. We went with choice number one because we already had the supplies on hand.
- Clear contact paper
- Scissors
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Related: Check out Dandelion Wish Luminary
Here’s How We Made the Luminaries:
Step 1:
Cut out a shape in your paper bag. I traced a bowl to make my circle.
Step 2:
Cut out your circle in the bag and contact paper. Make sure your contact paper circles are bigger than the circle in your bag. I just traced a bit further around the bowl to make my contact paper pieces.
Step 3:
Now head outside and collect pieces of nature for your luminary! We used a couple of pressed daisies, but the rest were fresh from our yard. My son loved sticking the pieces of nature on the contact paper!
You can choose to seal the nature finds with a second piece of contact paper. We just used one piece of contact paper and decided to keep it exposed.
Step 4:
I played around with the flameless candle quite a bit and tried to place it in the best spot to illuminate the pieces of nature. I ended up taping it to the top of a Tupperware inside the bag to raise it up a bit.
If you want to skip this step, you might want to consider cutting your shape lower than I did so the light shines through the contact paper and nature bits. I will do this next time!
My son was so proud of his luminary when he finished!
It was still pretty light out when we finished, so he set it on our porch step and waited for it to get a bit darker.
My boys have been playing hide and seek with their toys lately, so they decided to try that with the luminary in the yard! One would hide it and the other would search for it.
This went on for quite some time before they found the perfect spot to keep it in our yard for the night. They are already talking about making another one!
Pin it and save it for later!
I hope you give this simple nature activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.
∼Tara
