Autumn Leaf Art: Two Quick and Easy Crafts

We have a crop of oak and maple trees lining the street in our new neighborhood, and they make the biggest, crunchiest leaves ever. A month or so ago, their leaves were all over the sidewalk in heaps of red and gold and orange, but by now, their colors have faded to a drab brown. Still, we thought they might have a little life left in them yet, and so we brought a sheaf home to make art with.

Our first project was to make leaf rubbings (which reminded me of that old Barbie fashion plate game from the '90s, does anybody remember that?) So simple: just arrange your leaves on a sheet of paper vein side up (with a dab of painters' tape to hold them in place), put another sheet of paper on top, and rub with a crayon to make colorful prints. We tried several types of paper but found that the thinness of calligraphy paper gave us the best detail.



After we'd made rubbings of all of our leaves, Anouk and I unpeeled the leaves from the paper and the paper from the back of the leaves and got out our watercolors and painted them. Surprisingly, leaves make a great medium for watercolor paint -- the paint adheres really well and kind of lights up all the grain/detail in the leaf. It was fun to see the old leaves made colorful again -- this time in pinks and blues and purples.


























I had thought I might string the leaves up on twine to make a garland or incorporate them into some kind of a centerpiece but before I could, A. commandeered them for use in a very intricate and complicated Barbie colony under the dining room table (I think they are being used as a kind of blanket/airplane hybrid) So there's that, too.

What have you been crafting with lately?