i’ve seen sooo many cute ideas this season for ways of expressing thanks in a natural and artsy way! who else but the artful parent would present such a cute and clever idea as thanksgiving leaf garland? we had to try it!

first, N and i wandered around the neighborhood trying to find colorful leaves — somewhat of a tall order in these parts of the bay area. (one of the things i miss about the east coast!) we did manage to find some beauties. we got out the big books (art books, of course) and got read to press them.

we placed them in between the books for 24 hours to flatten.

the next day, we had so much fun writing on the leaves with metallic markers all of the things we are thankful for. tip: if you want to preserve the suppleness and color of the leaves, apply 1-2 coats of mod podge to each side after they’ve been pressed, and in this case, after you write on them. i’ll likely post a demo of this process soon.

N came up with lots of things she is thankful for, and we also made some leaves that were just cute designs and patterns.

she loved the leaves when they were finished!

i found a brown satin ribbon in my stash, and hot-glued the leaf stems to the back of the ribbon.

i realize it might be more legible against a plain wall, but i cannot resist hanging the garland in a sunny window in our home.

thankfulness for our two cats

i’m a sucker for the way light filters through beautiful colored leaves (and colorful artwork, for that matter!)

i also would love to try this awesome gratitude tree that i saw on playful learning – maybe next year!  count your blessings this thanksgiving!

with the autumn equinox just behind us, my thoughts are turning to colorful leaves and acorn hunts! i thought it might be a nice time to revisit the artistic endeavors that last fall brought in our home. click on the names below to see the complete tutorial for each:

windblown trees

leaf rubbings

some felted wool acorn cuties

a leaf mask

yarn pumpkins

and one of my favorites… autumn leaf garland!

we did a lot of fun halloween crafts last year, too… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. for now, enjoy the refreshing air, pinecones, bright leaves, and acorn treasures the season brings! crisp, fresh autumn art coming soon! stay tuned!

happy autumn!

what a perfect thing to do on these sunny summer days – make your own nature photos with sun art paper!

on saturday, N had a friend over to play. i tasked them with finding interesting looking natural objects in our backyard. they mostly gathered leaves and flowers.

then we went into the shade and pulled out a couple sheets of our sun art paper. (i bought three sizes of it from amazon over the winter, when i was daydreaming of sunny days ahead. this time we used the 5″x7″ paper.) we arranged the leaves and flowers on the paper before going into the sun.

next we put a clear acrylic sheet (comes with the paper) over the objects. this holds down your things so they don’t blow away in the wind or move around while exposure is happening. each sun art paper kit comes with just one, but if you want to do more than one at a time, raid your picture frame stash (especially the cheap plastic ones) and borrow some more from those. we left the paper in the sun for just 3-5 minutes (until it turns a very light blue.)

next we put the papers into a tub of water for one minute. because we wanted out images to turn out a deeper shade of blue, i added a few drops of lemon juice to the water (like it said to on the package.)

we repeated the process with more leaves and flowers… and some bubble wands, too!

after the prints have soaked for a minute, let them dry on a towel. (once completely dry, you can press them in a book for a day or so to make sure they are flat.)

the girls had fun watching how their pictures turned out, but mostly they were psyched just to run around with their popsicles. (perhaps the reason the package of sun art paper says for ages 6+)

these beautiful natural prints would make lovely cards, but i think i will frame this batch in a series to display in our home.

when i saw this idea on playbased learning’s blog, i thought it would be a fun one for a warm afternoon outside at the easel.

N and i mixed up some colored water in random spray bottles we found around the house. we just added about 8 drops of food coloring to the water.

we brought the easel out into the sun, and embarked on this charming little endeavor. as the blog (where i got the idea) said, it is a bit difficult for little fingers to work the pump squirters. the trigger squirter (our red paint was in) was a bit easier for N to control.

N wished the colors were brighter (next time, liquid watercolors might be in order.) we tried the paint on manilla paper, and it did show up brighter and made a rather cute little scene.

N was still delighted with the paintings we made, saying “they look like lollipop trees!”

i think the large ones will make for good wrapping paper for all of those summer birthday parties coming up!

a while back i posted a blog about making impressions of natural objects in sculpey after a nature walk. it was one of my favorites…

since we discovered that sculpey is fairly toxic when baking, i decided to try this out again, but this time using crayola model magic. N and i wanted to make a farewell gift for two of her sweet friends who are leaving the state, so what better thing to give than a piece of the bay area? so, impressions from the redwood tree in our yard. we pressed a leaf and a tiny pinecone into two pieces of model magic, and fashioned it into a droplet form, poking a hole through the top with a wooden skewer.

then we let it dry for 24 hours, and strung it on a leather cord along with a few earthy wooden beads we had in our stash. and there you have it – our ode to california farewell gift.

i just love when art activities evolve organically, and from a child-centered place. we’ve been spending a lot of time in the yard lately, and N is a bigtime twig gatherer. and lemme tell ya, we have some amazingly flexible, shiny, cool twigs in these parts.

wish i knew what types of trees these were.

the giving tree

yesterday N was collecting all sorts of sweet sticks… today, when i suggested putting them into a pretty vase, she said, “noooo, i want to make a vase out of them!” um, okay. improvise, momma! so i grabbed an empty honey jar and a couple rubber bands, and we went to work, covering the outside of the jar with the twigs, securing them with rubber bands at the top and bottom.

N helped with this for a long time, and i had to finish it up. it’s somewhat tedious for little hands. she took lots of breaks to gather more twigs.

keepin' on keepin' on

eventually the whole jar was covered with twigs that extended from its base to about an inch above its top lip, secured by two rubber bands. (i had to trim some of the longer twigs with scissors.)

i slid the rubber bands into the center, and covered them with raffia, (realizing that the blue rubber bands weren’t gonna get fully hidden, so i switched them out with tan ones, so be sure to start with tan if you do this.) N picked some flowers from our yard for the vase, and our creation was complete and functional!

i’m not entirely loving the raffia, and may change it to a groovy rustic ribbon. (mostly because my cat chews in raffia and will flip this vase over in two seconds flat if it’s in her range.)

it did make for a wonderfully earthy dinner centerpiece tonight.

while i’m not necessarily posting daily photos of us outdoors for the entirety of this blog in april, most of our projects lately and this month will involve mother earth, so….

thank you, 5 orange potatoes, for getting the kids outside!

it’s march and we have pink, white, and yellow blooms all over our neighborhood here – signs of spring!

tree in our front yard

one of my favorite spring blooms are cherry blossoms. i adore their soft pink petals. with spring in our hearts, we went to a friend’s house yesterday for a playdate. N and i brought along some simple art materials: paper, sharpies, and a pink stamp pad. because the kids were going to make fingerprints, i got the water-based, washable, kid-safe stamp pad, as opposed to the dye-based kind. i have to say that it’s not very washable anyway, and i’m disappointed that the pink my store had was more hot pink than the beautiful pale color of a cherry blossom. oh well, next time.

regardless, the girls went to town making lots of fingerprints on small rectangles of white paper.

we noticed they preferred to use just one pointer finger, so we encouraged them to use several fingers at a time to cluster the pink dots, much like the tree would have clusters of flowers. (they didn’t really care about that though.)

the more random the pink splotches, the more full and fluffy the trees turn out to look. after we had several little sheets of fingerprints, the kids were ready to play and dance, so we mommas sat down with our sharpies. we made branches connecting the little pink poufs on the page to create the cherry blossom trees.

must clarify that my tshirt was a happy matching accident - must have really had cherry blossoms on the brain!

after the playdate (and lunchtime and naptime) we gathered up some materials to glue the little tree pictures to cards, and embellish them with rhinestones, sequins, and glitter glue.

the finished cards would make sweet “happy spring!” cards or even nice mother’s day cards.

an alternative to using fingerprints would be to use a paintbrush and some (pale) pink watercolors, but i figured that when making these into cards for family, they always cherish little paw prints.

happy almost spring!