Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Autumn Crafts

Many an autumn afternoon used to be whiled away doing nature crafts with my boys.  These days they're not quite as interested as they used to be in some of our old standbys but last week they humoured me.  We went for a walk around the neighbourhood in the sunshine and collected some leaves.
We came home and got out our old tin of crayons, wax paper and the iron.
 A short time later...
Love these!  I first made them when I was in elementary school and have had a fondness for them ever since.  It is quite possible that the next time I make these it will be with my grandkids. Now there's a thought.  Perhaps some of my friends with little ones will take pity on me and start sending their kids over for craft time with me and I can continue to indulge my love of playdough and other such lovely stuff.
In the meantime it looks as though I'll be spending some of our afternoons on a new pursuit - driving lessons with my newly 16 year old.  Oh for the days of playdough and mud pies!

9 comments:

daisy g said...

Oh my! Driving lessons! I feel your pain!

The leaf mosaic looks beautiful! What a fun way to spend the day. I can't believe the variety of colors! A true keepsake.

sheila said...

Lovely!

Oh for the days indeed. I know exactly what you mean. A bit of a sigh, a bit exciting, a bit bittersweet. What a ride, eh?

Preinnes: (noun) the period of humanity when humans were still outees. See hist. of time entry. (OE)

Jacqueline said...

Wow! Happy belated birthday to W! driving practice....time flies hey? he must be so excited!
b and t would love to come over and do leaf mosaics with you! but i have an even better idea. how about you come over here and do crafts with them:-)?!

Unknown said...

What a lovely keep sake. What wonderful leaves.

Erin said...

These leaf mosaics are really beautiful, and if they involve heating irons up to see what happens to the wax crayon bits, they will still enjoy it ;-) We are still crafting right now, and it sounds like instead of thinking, "oh, but I really could be doing X,Y, or Z, and this or that isn't going to get done", it might be wiser to embrace this time!!

Isn't is interesting how some crafts from school become favourites? I always loved making the tissue paper cherry blossom trees. Little squares of tissue, in a gleeful assortment of pinks and reds, then you draw your tree, and then with a pencil, you fit each tissue square over the pencil eraser end, and blob on a little glue and stick it to the branches, over and over to create your blossom-laden branches. I always loved the crunchy texture!

I never made these but I am going to show the boys, and collect some leaves to do this. Thanks for sharing Heather, nice to catch up this morning while I sip my coffee and listen to Scott reading the boys stories....

Brenda @ Its A Beautiful Life said...

Oh my... I used to love collecting leaves as a child and making crafts with them.

I don't have kids around me at present, but that doesn't have to stop me... especially when I see all these fun things to do with autumn leaves!

Nicole said...

Heather, these look awesome but Im sort of dumb and dont get exactly how you made them? Id love step by step directions if you could offer them? Ill subscribe to this post in case you respond with the directions. Thanks!

Heather said...

Hello,

They're very fun and easy to do. Instead of typing out the steps here for you I thought I'd google to see if anyone had already done so and sure enough...

http://unofficialhomeschooler.com/2011/10/28/leaf-stained-glass-windows/

Hope that helps. I bet you could find other examples online too if you like.
H

Anonymous said...

Love the leafy "stained glass" - so pretty. = )