Isn’t autumn just wonderful for crafting inspiration? We’ve done so many lovely craft activities already this season – in fact I’ve rounded a few of them up for my pal Penny’s blog over at A Residence – and these simple leaf prints are our latest masterpiece.
With so many fabulous leaves lying around, we thought we’d get the paints out and put them to good use. First job was to head out for a walk in the park to find some leaves in varying shapes and sizes.
After a good debate about which leaves were our favourites, and which ones might make good prints, the kids chose this selection.
We used white A3 paper to make our leaf prints, simply because that’s what we had in the craft box. It worked well with strongly coloured paints, although I do love the idea of using black paper with some super-bright neon paints too.
We painted one side of each leaf, then pressed it carefully onto the paper.
You do need to be a little bit careful when you press the leaves down, to avoid making them slide around too much. We found that peeling them off slowly left a better imprint from the leaf too.
Here are our finished leaf prints – what do you think?
This was a super-simple craft which needed hardly any preparation, I love how the kids could just let their imaginations loose with colour mixing, patterns and thickness of paint. We talked about how we might do it differently next time, and the kids want to try cutting out the leaves when they’re dry to make them into a mobile – sound good doesn’t it!
Naturally Crafty
If you’ve been crafting with nature lately, or would just love some inspiration, take a look at the ‘Naturally Crafty’ nature craft linky which I co-host for lots of ideas – and do share yours with us too.
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