Iraq Suncatcher Flag {Tutorial}
It’s important for children to learn about the world they live in and today we talked about Iraq in our home and made a flag suncatcher.
Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العـراق ) is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
According to Wikipedia:
The flag of Iraq (Arabic: علم العراق) includes the three equal horizontal red, white, and black stripes of the Arab Liberation flag. This basic tricolor has been in use since 1963, with several changes to the green symbols in the central white stripe; the most recent version bears the takbir rendered in green. A new design for the flag was confirmed by Law 9 on 22 January 2008.
After we learned about Iraq, we made a suncatcher for our window. We decided to printout the takbir on white ahead of time rather then try to make it out of tissue. So just ignore the white tissue in the supplies photo since we did not use it.
Supplies
Contact paper
Tissue paper in red & black
Cutting mat
Green cardstock
Printout of takbir (2)
Ruler
Xacto
Hole punch
Scissors
Yarn
We started by laying out our cutting mat with the green cardstock and placing our ruler on the edge of our cardstock. We used the xacto to cut inside the rulers’ edge on all four sides of the paper, creating a frame.
While we had the cutting mat and xacto out, we used them to cut out takbir into a long strip that would fit across our frame.
I laid out the contact paper and my daughter used the grid on the back to cut two pieces that were slightly larger than our frame. We then worked as a team to peel the backing off the contact while laying our frame on top. The sticky part of the contact paper should be up.
My daughter laid one of the takbir in the middle of the contact paper. It’s okay if the edges go over, we’ll cut them later when both pieces are on.
We cut the red and black tissue paper in strips and then in random rectangle and triangle shapes. Then my daughter laid the red shapes on top of the flag and the black tissue on the bottom.
Once the spaces are covered in tissue, she laid the second takbir on top and cut off the paper that over laps.
We peeled off the backing on the second piece of contact paper and laid it on top of the flag. Then my daughter cut off the excess contact paper around the green frame and punched two holes in the top two corners.
She used the scissors to cut off a piece of yarn and tied off each end on the frame. Now her flag is ready to hang in the window, letting in sunlight and looking like stained glass. I think I would recommend using thicker cardstock on the takbir so that both sides don’t show through, but the reason we printed it twice is so you can read it inside and outside the house.
If you enjoyed learning about Iraq, one of the countries in the Arab League, visit A Crafty Arab on Pinterest to learn about the other counties. Please feel free to pin this to your board.
