3D Paper Bag Rainbows

Hello! It’s so nice to see you! 🙂 It’s been 364 days since our last blog post…and boy, has this year been a doozy. We have not seen our family (in person) in over a year; we’ve stayed safe at home for what feels like an eternity; and we’ve discovered that virtual-learning can (at times) be very taxing on the entire family. That being said, we are extremely grateful that we have had the ability to stay home and stay healthy. We also count ourselves lucky that I was able to devote the time necessary to help our daughter finish kindergarten last spring…and move through 1st grade virtually this year. Being a teacher is no joke! And even though we can’t put this awful pandemic behind us just yet, we all definitely deserve a huge pat on the back for surviving this past year. So, go ahead…take a minute and give yourself that much-deserved adulation!

In order to find the time required to help our daughter with school…as well as the time to complete all of the other day-to-day tasks on my plate…I needed to step away from the blog. But we are popping on today to share a craft (that just so happens to be perfect for St. Patrick’s Day) that is so colorful, and so fun…it was just begging to be showcased on the blog. So…without further ado…we proudly introduce our dazzling 3D Paper Bag Rainbows!

In January, our family became slightly obsessed with making 3D snowflakes out of paper bags…a fabulous idea that we discovered courtesy of the lovely Katy Renfro (@katy.renfro). As we sat around our dining room table, adding all sorts of colors and patterns to our white paper bags (before transforming them into snowflakes), I began to wonder if it would be possible to use the same concept to create colorful 3D rainbows.

Well…I’m here to tell you that it is indeed possible to transform a stack of small paper bags into beautiful 3D rainbows! Would you like to find out how? Keep scrolling! 🙂

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Supplies:

(6) Small White Paper Bags (we used these 4 x 6 bags)
Tempera Paint Sticks (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple)
- We used our favorite Kwik Stix paint sticks, but markers will also work.
Hot Glue Gun
Cotton Balls
Thin Cardboard (like a cereal box, or similar)
Scissors

Instructions:

Start by stacking six, flat paper bags on top of one another. Make sure that the tops of the bags are all pointing in the same direction. NOTE: The bags that we used had an extra lip on top…if your bags also have a lip, go ahead and cut them off, so that the tops of your paper bags are even (as pictured above).
If you want your rainbow to have a small, see-through arch along the bottom, keep your six bags stacked together, and carefully cut a lowercase “n” shape out of each side on the bottom of the bags (as pictured above). Make sure you are cutting from the bottom (sealed) side of the bags, and make sure to leave the middle section completely intact. If you do not want to include an arch on the bottom of your rainbow, go ahead and skip this step.
Now it’s time to add those rainbow colors! Working with one bag at a time, add lines of color horizontally across the bag…starting with purple at the bottom, and working your way up to red at the top. NOTE: If you decided to add an arch on the bottom, leave that thin middle section white (as pictured above). Try to apply each color as evenly as possible. Once dry, flip the bag over and repeat the colors on the other side. Try to keep the lines of color as similar as possible on both sides of the bag.
Add the horizontal stripes of color to the back and front of the remaining five bags. You want the lines of color to match up as closely as possible on each bag. TIP: Use your first bag as a guide to mark the color lines on the remaining bags.
Once the bags are full of color, it’s time to glue them all together. NOTE: Hot glue guns can get extremely hot, and can cause severe burns. This step should be completed by an adult, or with adult supervision. Place one bag down on a flat surface. Working quickly and carefully, spread hot glue along the bottom (sealed) portion of the bag and then down the center of the bag (making an uppercase “T” with the hot glue. Quickly place a second bag on top, making sure to line up all of the edges. Carefully press down on the bags, to seal them together. The bags should only be attached along the bottom and center sections.
Make another “T” with hot glue, on top of the second bag, and place a third bag on top. Repeat this process until all six bags have been glued together in a single stack.
At this point, you can open up your rainbow, by carefully pulling the tops apart and away from each other, on opposing ends. But the rainbow will not stay fanned out without first attaching the ends to something a bit heavier…and that’s where the thin piece of cardboard comes in handy.
We wanted to make our rainbow look like it was floating in the clouds, so we chose to cut our cardboard into a whimsical-looking cloud shape. We then placed a single strip of hot glue down the center of one end of our rainbow, and adhered it to the cardboard. We fanned out the rainbow, and placed a single strip of hot glue down the center of the bag on the other end…and stuck it down onto the cardboard as well.
The other option is to cut a small strip of cardboard, and glue each end of the paper bag rainbow onto it, so that the cardboard is completely hidden underneath the rainbow. It really just comes down to your preferences, and how you want the end result to look.
If you chose to create a cloud base for your rainbow, the final step is gluing on all of the cotton balls. This can be accomplished with either hot glue, or some Elmer’s school glue (we used Elmer’s for this last step).

Our 3D Paper Bag Rainbows make us so very happy! We especially love how it’s possible to spy all of the vibrant colors from every angle – even when you look down from above, the colors shine right through to the interior of the bags!

All in all, we made three different 3D rainbows…and each one has slight variations. We made two with a cloud base, one with a see-through arch on the bottom, one shorter/smaller-scale rainbow, and one with a couple of different rainbow hues.

So…get creative! A pastel-colored rainbow would be pretty this time of year. Or you could play around with the length of your paper bags…to create a variety of different-sized rainbows. If you decide to make one…or several…we would love to see your 3D Paper Bag Rainbows in all of their glory. Feel free to tag us on Instagram (@capturing.parenthood).