Until biodegradable 'Zero Plastic Sellotape' made an appearance, we avoided making sun catchers as they involved sticky-back-plastic which ends up eventually as micro-plastic particles in nature. But, hurrah! see-through Sellotape is now available in a 'zero plastic' version.
To make your sun catcher...
1. Cut out a large shape from sturdy cardboard (ours was made from a corrugated card packing box) and cut out the middle. Any offcuts can be added to garden compost.
2. Stretch (slightly) overlapping strips of biodegradable Sellotape across the cut out middle of the shape. Trim the edges of the tape, so none stick out beyond the outer edge of the shape.
3. Stick pieces of biodegradable cellophane (e.g. saved-up Quality Street chocolate wrappers) onto the sticky surface you have created. In my opinion, random placement and leaving gaps looks better than trying to be too neat and overfilling the space - see photo below to compare mine vs my child's -making this an ideal craft for children.
4. If you want the back of the suncatcher to look neat (we weren't bothered about this as our suncatchers are hung at a window which isn't often seen close-up from the outside) then you can cut out a matching cardboard shape to glue to the back to hide the ends of the Sellotape.
5. Hole-punch the top of your shape (you'll need to flatten the bit you want to hole punch with your fingers first) and suspend the suncatcher from a short (child-safe) length of cotton / jute twine / leftover ribbon. Plastic-free garden twine is available through the post from &Keep and from Scottish-based Nutscene.
The artistic-shaped offcuts of cellophane (used by my eldest child to create their suncatcher) were the leftovers from upcycling our Christmas LED snowflake fairy lights into Valentine fairy lights, using hearts cut from biodegradable Quality-Street chocolate wrappers. The cellophane hart shapes (in red, pink and purple) were attached to the existing lights with a folded over piece of the biodegradable Sellotape. Obviously, only adorn LED bulbs - which do not get hot when in use.
