Light catchers are a very pretty and very fun addition to any room, they can create a very fun and colorful atmosphere for relatively little money.  By making your own, you also get to choose the look even more to create a truly one of a kind creation.

For this project you will need:

• Overhead projection paper, or another clear plastic ‘paper’
• Some vintage images (my favorite place to get them: Vintage Pintables)
• Popsicle Stick
• String or ribbon or thin wire
• Hole Punch
• 3D Craft Paint: Or similar
• Time, and Patience

To Make:

• First find some smaller images (for this, I used a sea motif, but you can choose anything else that may suit your fancy).
• Open up your preferred graphics editor, and open a new file that is ‘paper sized’ (8 x 10 usually). 
• An easy way is to click ‘Copy Image’ on the website and paste it onto the new project you just opened.
• Print it out after you’ve gotten enough images (for this tutorial, I’ve just used four).  Most of the time, the ‘rough’ side of the overhead projector ‘paper’ should be facing down.
• Let it dry for a little bit if you’ve used an ink jet printer.

Carefully squeeze out the 3D Craft Paint to cover your images.

If you have any excess, carefully and slowly ‘push it’ over using the popsicle stick.   Put it aside and let the coating set according to the directions, usually it will be about three hours.

• Cut out the images leaving a place for a hole punch.
• For each image, cut out a length of ribbon or string, if you would like- mix up the sized (it’s pretty cute this way).
• Tie a length to each cut out image.

Note: Alternately, you can also put the lengths into the paint, as it dries it will adhere pretty solidly.  

If you notice any cracks, fill them in with a little bit of the paint. The stuff is rather delicate, but in the case of cracks it fills in fairly well.

This was a fun (if quite long to finally get done) project, that has a lot of potential to it.  The one I’ve made for this tutorial was about as basic as these things come, and it’s definitely cute (and we are just *not* going to mention the rain right now).

Hang, and enjoy!