Art / Craft Time – Leaf Guys

Last week our planned art project was a flop and I ended up deciding to not even post about it.  The very next day I saw the cutest little leaf people that my (real life) friend Jill made with her 2 oldest kids, and knew right away that we’d have to make these too. :)  I’ve seen this little project on blogs before but for some reason didn’t think M would be interested.

Turns out he’s interested.  After we made the first bunch, pictured in this post, he made more the next day, and the day after that!  This was definitely a big hit and if you’ve never done it with your kiddos, I highly recommend it!

Here’s how I had it set up: Sometimes I like to just set up a project and leave it until he notices it and asks, “What are we going to do?!” :)  It’s like a little surprise and makes him more eager to do it.  You’ll need colored paper, a marker for drawing in details, glue, and googley eyes.  M also wanted scissors once we started putting the leaves on the papers, so he could cut off stems or cut leaves in half.

Grab a basket and go outside to find some freshly fallen leaves.  You don’t want crunchy ones that will fall apart when you press them onto the paper.  Also pick dandelions if you see them – they make great earrings or eyes!Enjoy a little fall sunshine while you are at it:

The weather was just cool enough for him to need his new little mama-made hat with a pom-pom. :) 

Bring your leaves inside and start creating! 

       

This was so much fun!  I hope you try this with your kids!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Art Time – Nature Collage

 

This little art project is perfect for a window decoration this time of year! I was thinking of simply finding and gluing objects from nature onto a piece of sturdy cardboard.  M is such a glue guy.  And he wanted to do the whole play-doh collage in an egg carton project again, which was very cool, and very tempting… but then I was reminded of contact paper collages by this post at One Hook Wonder.  They are so easy, and always turn out so lovely with the autumn sunlight shining through.  So that’s what we did!

First, M grabbed his “nature basket” and headed outside to see what he could find:

I made a point of telling him no rocks, and no sticks bigger than a finger.  I wanted to avoid the frustration that would come if he tried to stick something too heavy to the contact paper.  He searched and searched, and mostly found an assortment of leaves (I love the bright red ones!), a couple of dandelions, small pinecones, and one small stick. :)

He brought everything in and set it on the table while I cut the contact paper.  Ours is roughly 7” x 20”.  If all of your nature items are flat, you can cut 2 pieces and sandwich the items in between.  They are sure to stay put that way.  Since M had some lovely 3-dimensional objects, we chose to just use one piece of contact paper.

 

 

When he was done arranging items and sticking them down, we hung the finished collage in his bedroom window.

  Beautiful. :) 

And this way the birdies can enjoy it too. 
(M is always thinking about birds.  I wonder if he will be an ornithologist?)

 

It was so much fun, and we realized the next day that we’d missed all the pretty red maple leaves in our front yard, so we made another one!

 

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Craft Time – Misc. Projects from Apple Week

I meant to include these in my Tot School post over the weekend.  We did these last week, but I didn’t feel any of them deserved a post of their own; it was mostly ideas from other people.
Anyway, I thought I’d share them here.  Maybe I will start doing an Arts and Crafts This Week weekly post or something… I’ll have to think about it…
So, last week was Apple week here.  M and Daddy went to the farm and picked apples from the orchard.  They brought home 8 brown grocery bags FULL of apples, and said there were tons more that they didn’t get to.  I’m thinking M will have to start a roadside apple stand when he’s a little bigger!
So we made mini-caramel apples:We put sprinkles on just a couple.  I really can’t stand sprinkles, the crunch just startles me every time, but of course M loves them.  This idea was from Michelle.  They were pretty yummy!
We also did some fall-colored cookie cutter prints with our new cookie cutters: 
This idea was from Ten Kids and a Dog.
And we made a pretty apple suncatcher: This idea was from Izzie, Mac & Me.
These were all fun projects!!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time! – Paper Towel Leaf Mobile

M has had the watercolor fish mobile we made in this post hanging in his room for several months and I thought it was time to change it up a little bit.  I’ve been itching to do some sort of fall leaf craft, so that’s what we did!
I have to admit, this was a joint effort between the two of us, I did quite a bit of the work, but it was something I really enjoyed doing.  Mama needs a little craft time too sometimes! ;)
First, I drew several leaves of different shapes and sizes onto some paper towels (you can use coffee filters too, but for some reason paper towels seem to work better at having the colors spread out for us… I have no idea why).  I used an orange marker so the color would blend in with the rest of the fall colors we were using.
Then I cut the leaves out – this was the labor-intensive part for me. 
I put them on some more paper towels so the table would not get soaked, and had M scribble on them with markers and then spray them with water (note the tongue, hee hee): I had to snatch some of them away before he drenched them because after a certain point of “wetness” the colors actually started to fade away and soak into the paper towels below.
The finished leaves:
After they dried I used a needle and some white thread to string them together and then we hung them in M’s room (the brightness of the flash makes the colors look a little faded):
Have a beautiful day! :)

Art & Craft time! Arm Print Autumn Tree (and stamping!)

I’m working at having an art, craft or sensory-type activity for M on a daily basis.  Today we made a pretty fall tree.
You will need:

• Paint in fall colors – we used orange, yellow, green, and red
• Brown paint for the tree trunk and branches
• paintbrush
• paper – we used cardstock
• leaf stamp
• pieces of felt
• something flat to use for a stamp pad.  We used saucers… more on this below.

First to make temporary stamp pads, begin by putting the leaf colors on the saucers.  We put two colors on each saucer. Next, place one small square of felt on top of each paint glob. Gently pat the felt down until the paint soaks entirely through. Optionally, you could use a sponge and let paint soak into it, but I have found sponges do not give as clear a print with stamps as does the felt.  To keep from wasting paint, you really don’t need to use as much paint as I did.  You could also use something like a cd jewel case to do this, then shut it (possibly wrap it with plastic too) to keep your “stamp pads” usable for future projects.
Now, the fun part! 
Paint your child’s inside forearm and the palm of their hand with the brown paint.  You may want to warn them that you are going to do this, apparently it can be a bit ticklish. :)  We talked about how the paint felt slick and cool on his skin.  Here’s M showing you his brown arm.  He really did love this although you would not know it by looking at his face.
Next, print the arm onto the paper for your tree:
Start stamping leaves onto the tree branches and some on the ground, or falling in the air: See how crisp the stamp is using the felt?  M wiggled the stamp some after he set it down sometimes, creating a bit more of a blurry leaf, but the felt worked really well as a stamp pad.
I let him put the stamp in different colors without wiping it off first, which turned out to be ok, because some leaves have a couple of different colors in them, just like real ones!
Here’s his finished tree:
The felt washed up nicely and so did the boy. :)
Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time! – Autumn Wreath

We made this fun fall wreath today. I did the cutting, M did the gluing, and we both had fun. :) (I really do love cutting!)

You will need:

• a paper plate with the center cut out.
• glue
• craft leaves (or real leaves if you prefer!). We got our craft leaves at Dollar Tree, but there’s some good clip art leaves here.
• autumn clip art. You can find your own, or you are welcome to use ours (print 2 sheets to have enough for your wreath) – all the images are public domain.

Then, get busy gluing and sticking things on however you like!

Punch a hole in the top, string some yarn through, and hang it up for the world to see!

Have a beautiful day! :)