I have been wanting to do a puffy cloud project forever.  It wasn’t until recently that it all came together in my mind, after weeks of pouring rain in Los Angeles and lots of amazing rainbows.  It was all about the ribbons! We needed something to represent the rain and the ribbons worked out perfectly.

Here’s what you’ll need…

Materials

My favorite “paper”, Double Sided Drop Cloth  (I have it listed on my favorite art supply list in case you want to check out my other favorites.)

black sharpies

oil pastels

tempera paint

assorted ribbons

masking tape

a stapler

some kind of pillow stuffing

Steps

1. Cut a piece of drop cloth to about 8×10. Encourage your child to draw a big puffy cloud on the shiny, plastic side of the drop cloth.

2. Flip your drop cloth over. Use oil pastels or chalk pastels or both to add rainbow details to the opposite side of the drop cloth. Then add lots of beautiful tempera paint. To see how we mix paints from the primary colors, check out this post how to mix paints with kids.

3. Prep a bunch of ribbons about 2 feet long. Take a piece of masking tape and tape it sticky side up to a table.

4. Have your child place the ends of the ribbons to the sticky side of the tape so they cascade off the table.  Don’t you just love the word cascade? So fancy.

This part was really fun!  5. Once the paint is dry on your rainbow cloud, line it up with another plain piece of drop cloth and cut both pieces out to the size of the cloud. This part may be best suited for an adult.

6. The adults over here also did this next part.  We placed a piece of tape over the sticky side of the ribbons and then glue gunned the whole strip of ribbons onto the inside of the cloud (above) and then stapled both pieces together, leaving a whole about 4 or 5 inches.

7.  Now it’s time to stuff.  We have about a million pieces of yarn odds and ends so we used that for our stuffing. You could use real batting or cotton balls.

It was fun to stuff, stuff, stuff, the rainbow clouds.

8.  The final step is to staple the last part closed and you’re ready to hang.  Oh, that reminds me, we did staple on a little ribbon loop on the top for hanging.

Each one came out so special and sweet.

You might have seen this pic I posted on instagram of my daughter’s hanging up on her wall.  It looks so happy and bright.  Or you can hang it from the ceiling so it can float around.

I tried to get the girls from art class to take a smiling pic with their puffy rainbow clouds but they just weren’t really having it.  Oh well. They’re still super sweet. Thanks for reading along and happy making. xo, Meri