Friday is art day around here and with temperatures in the single digits last week, what better art project to make than a snowman?! I’m so excited to share this textured snowman craft with you. The snowman looks so real that you almost feel like it’s made of snow!
Materials:
- Construction paper or cardstock (Colors: blue, white, black, orange, and brown)
- Patterned paper or cardstock
- Clear contact paper
- Kosher sea salt
- white paint
- small paintbrush
- liquid glue
- glue stick
- pencil
- scissors
- hole punch
1. The first step is to trace a snowman shape onto a piece of blue construction paper or cardstock. I used a couple of small, round objects I found around the house and traced around them to make the snowman. With a pencil, draw a line of snow on each side of the snowman. Cut out the snowman and the line of snow.
2. Dip the end of a small paintbrush into white paint and dot around the paper to make snowflakes. Allow to dry. Or, if you’re impatient like me, dry it with a hairdryer. 🙂 Actually, this step of adding snowflakes could just as easily be done at the end of the project and might be better to do it that way if you don’t have time to let it dry. Since the dots were small, it didn’t take long for them to dry; we just cut out all our snowman pieces while they dried. Do whatever works for you!
3. Cut out a piece of clear contact paper that is the same size as a regular piece of construction paper. Take the backing off the contact paper and place your snowman cutout on top of the sticky side. The snowman cutout and the bottom of the paper where the snow is should now be sticky from the contact paper.
4. Now it’s time to build your snowman! We used a hole punch to make the circles for the mouth, cut small round circles for the eyes and buttons, and a triangle for a nose. All you have to do is just stick them right onto the contact paper; no glue required! We then cut out arms from brown construction paper and then used patterned paper for the scarf and hat. We used a glue stick to secure them onto the paper.
5. Here the messy fun part: Sprinkle kosher sea salt all over the contact paper and gently press it down. My kids had a ball doing this! Shake off the excess into a trashcan and vacuum the rest of it off the floor. (Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, the salt stuck really well to the contact paper and I haven’t had any issues with it falling off even a few days later.)
Here is what the snowman looked like after all the excess salt was shaken off. Doesn’t the texture look like real powdery snow?!
6. But there’s one more step left. If you leave your snowman like this, there won’t be anything to support the contact paper and the bottom part won’t be as sturdy. So the final step is to glue a piece of white construction paper or cardstock onto the back of the picture. Not only does it provide support to the contact paper, but the white color really makes the snow pop! Check out the difference below:
One thing to note when gluing on the white construction paper: make sure the glue will dry clear. If not, you’ll be able to see it under the snowman and snow. We just used an Elmer’s glue stick and it did fine, except for one small spot on my son’s where he had a huge glob of glue and it didn’t totally dry clear.
Here’s the final product:
My kids LOVED making these and I think yours will, too!
Looking for more snowman ideas? Check out my Snow and Snowman theme page or my Snow & Snowman Pinterest board!
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