Fall Crafts Capturing the Beauty of Autumn Leaves

 

Last week I shared some autumn crafts including leaf embroidery. I promised another fall craft if it worked and it mostly did. So today I am sharing how to make a leaf bowl. Now I saw photographs all over the place like this one for inspiration. I went outside and picked some beautiful fall leaves. Then I wiped them and let them dry for a few hours. I gathered a plastic cup, a balloon, a paintbrush, and my ModPodge. When I was ready I blew up the balloon and put it in the plastic cup. The cup works as a stand so you do not have to hold the balloon in place. Put the knotted side down into the cup. Then I spread some ModPodge on my first leaf and stuck it on to the balloon. I then spread more ModPodge on the other side of the leaf to get it really stuck. I continued doing this trying to overlap the leaves.

A Squirrel's Story and The Ship Captain's Tale -- Book Reviews

Disclosure: Little Five Star sent me copies of these books free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am sharing two fun books from Little Five Star. The first is a true story about a mother squirrel who will do anything for her babies. A Squirrel's Story by Jana Bommersbach and illustrated by Jeff Yesh is a story about a mother's love. The narrator is the mother squirrel. 

Sharing Saturday 14-41

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and to all of you who took the time to check out what others shared! There were so many amazing ideas from math, books suggestions, recipes and just about everything Halloween. There were so many great ideas, I have had a hard time choosing which is why this Sharing Saturday is opening so late!! Our most clicked was from Dabbling Momma: Halloween Rock Garden.

Needle Felted Acorn Top Strawberry

So yesterday I mentioned we had collected some acorn caps when we walked back to our car after checking out the swans. After letting them sit for a few days to make sure there were no bugs in them, we wanted to needle felt some acorns. Our plan was to bring them to school as part of Teacher Appreciation Week. I tried to choose wool roving colors for different seasons and one of them was red. Hazel commented on how the red one looked like a strawberry. We decided to make strawberries. Since we have already shared our Strawberry Exploration, we will just share the craft today. We painted the caps green first.

While the paint dried we began needle felting. We took some red roving and rolled into a strawberry shape. Then we needled it as much as possible. I have some safety needle felting tools for Hazel to use, but she did catch her finger once. I always had to finish them since she was afraid of holding them and needling. We also decided to make some unripe ones so we could show the progression of strawberries. 

For these we mixed some colors to make them look like they were ripening. Once the shapes were solid enough, we glued them into the caps. Then let them dry overnight. Now we have some lovely needle felted acorn top strawberries. Hazel decided she wanted to keep all the strawberries and acorns we made for herself and give them to the teachers, but she also wants to make more.

For more ideas on strawberries (mostly recipes) and fruit explorations:

• Native American Strawberry Corn Bread
• Strawberry Shortcake at Strawberry Festival
• Strawberry Banana Muffins
• Strawberry Muffins
• Strawberry Jam
• Strawberry Cake
• Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream 
• Pineapple Exploration 
• Raspberry Exploration 
• Blueberry Exploration 
• Strawberry Exploration
• My Fruit Pinterest Board

Pottery Barn Inspired Painted Acorns

Have you entered my current giveaway yet? You can enter it every day!!

So a week or so ago, Hazel and I were walking around the new mall near our house and went into Pottery Barn to look around. My little shopper girl did not want to leave since there were so many beautiful things to look at, however one thing we saw were gold painted acorns. We decided we could make some and Hazel wanted to make them rainbow colors. While we were out making apple and nature prints, we rolled some of our acorns around int he fall colored paints.

After the paint dried I glued the tops back on and we displayed them. First we did a display with the needle felted acorns I made in the past.

Then we pulled out some of our autumn decorations and found leaf bowls to put them in.

Today, I also made some gold colored ones, however what I thought was gold paint ended up being more of a glitter paint. Oh, well. I like them still.

To get the ones like Pottery Barn I am guessing you would need gold spray paint. We don't have any, so these will have to do for now. Happy Autumn!!

Getting Ready for the Holiday Fair at Hazel's School

Sharing Saturday is still open for you to share your child-oriented crafts and activities or to be inspired by the amazing ones already shared!

As we approach the holiday season, I found out that we need to supply some things for the amazing holiday fair at Hazel's school, Cape Ann Waldorf School. At the fair they have a Wee Folk Shop where the young children (through second grade) can "shop" for a certain number of tickets they get to go into a room that is set up with silks hanging from the ceiling making it more their size and wonderful gifts to "buy" and then have an elf wrap for them. The idea is for them to get a gift for a family member, but in reality they get themselves a gift. Last year Hazel got a barrette (don't know why since she won't wear one) and a needle felted sheep. She went into it twice. Every family in the Early Childhood Program at the school is asked to donate at least 20 items to the Wee Folk Shop. 

There is also a Pocket Lady. Basically it is a person who wears a dress with pockets everywhere and a child can use one ticket to pick a gift from any pocket. These gifts are meant to be small and can be something like a marble or stone or shell or something small that is homemade. All are suppose to be Waldorf type of gifts and we were asked to wrap these in tissue paper. Every family in the school is asked to donate at least 20 Pocket Lady gifts as well.

With Hazel sick the last few days, I needed something to work on where I could sit next to her, so I made some of these gifts. I needle felted some acorns and used the acorn tops we have been finding. I also needle felted some lady bugs. Oh, and I needle felted a jack o' lantern for Hazel (see above). And of course I made extra acorns and an extra lady bug so Hazel could have some as well. I used the double and triple caps for Hazel.

We also used some stones, pine cones, and shells that Hazel has and Hazel helped me wrap them all.

In the end, we ended up with 40 Pocket Lady gifts and bagged them in groups of 20 (which we were asked to do).

For the Wee Folk Shop I needle felted some snowmen. I saw a cute one at Better Homes and Gardens. I made mine a bit more plain in that Waldorf way of using your imagination.

At the Pumpkin Patch Holiday Fair, I saw some of the cutest ribbon barrettes. Some were Disney princesses (I may try these for Hazel's birthday) and some were snails and animals. I googled, and checked Pinterest and found some tutorials and some ideas. I made a couple of simple bows. Then I tried some flowers. And I attempted the snails (which I fell in love with at the fair). I have more to make, but wanted to share these. They are so easy to do with glue, ribbon and barrettes.  I also had two unused headbands sitting around from our teddy bear picnic and I had some wool felt flowers I bought awhile ago on clearance and just sewed them onto the headbands. They are cute as well.

So here are the first 10 of my Wee Folk Shop contributions. I will be making some more, but thought I would share what I have been up to. Enjoy!!

Welcome Autumn Acorn Garland

Ok, so I flipped through the Paper Source catalog this weekend and was inspired by this garland. Now I love Paper Source!! And I love their products, but I cannot always spend the money and some of them are easy enough to figure out how to make on my own.

This was one I thought I definitely could do. First I googled for an acorn image. I found this great coloring page at Free Printable Coloring Pages. I printed it full page. Well actually I copied it into Word because I had trouble printing from their site, but then printed it full page onto cardstock. I printed/copied it onto fall colored cardstock for the tops and cut them out. I took my pattern piece and cut the bottom higher than the squiggle and cut them out of handmade papers that I had on hand. I glued these to the tops. Then I printed out the words "Welcome Autumn" from Word at 250 for size. I really liked 300 but wanted to save on how many of the clear sticker sheets I used. Then I hung them off yarn by our front door. How are you welcoming autumn this year? (And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, how are you welcoming spring?)

Pause in Our Rhythm & Autumn & Her Fairies

Yesterday morning, Hazel woke up extremely early (3:30 a.m.) with a sore throat. She did not go back to sleep. I had trouble believing the sore throat thing since she was singing and jumping, but as the day went on it became obvious. She had an awful night last night and was awake quite a few times crying in pain or wanting something to drink. This morning she slept a little later and then wanted to listen to her stories on cd. At 7 she climbed into bed with me and we stayed there (sleeping most of the time) until 8. Needless to say, we canceled our plans for the day and she did not go to school yesterday. So we have a pause in our weekly rhythm--the first week of our full rhythm with swim lessons starting this week. I got to thinking about how it is easier to pause because Hazel is sick than because I am. And I know how fortunate I am to have my mother-in-law close by and always willing to take her when I'm sick.

Autumn

Source

This morning I made some clothespin dolls for Hazel of Autumn and her Maple Fairy and Oak Fairy. I shared the story I wrote about them the other day. I used a paint marker to paint their shoes and eyes. Then I used cotton for autumn and some scrap red yarn for her hair. For the fairies I used felt and cut out templates of the leaves. Then I used some fabric paint markers to have their spilled paint on them. I decided not to sew the clothes since I originally was going to have Hazel do this with me. So I used Sobo Glue which works great with fabric. I discovered it when I was making dollhouse furniture and dolls.

Maple and Oak Fairies

The other project I have been working on is a doll from Joan Russell's Dolls of the World Collection. The pattern is from The Woman's Day Book of Soft Toys & Dolls by Joan Russell. I'm hoping to make all of her collection as well as her Native American collection and my ultimate goal is to make her Amy doll (the cute one on the lower corners of the cover) and all her clothes and doll for Hazel for her birthday gift. I figured I would practice on the other ones first and it is a good thing I did because I messed up the hair and the eyes are not perfect. Oh, well. Now I just need to make the poor doll clothes. Joan Russell is very detail oriented when it comes to costumes so this may take awhile. Can you tell which country she is suppose to be from?

Did I mention that September is National Sewing Month? So it seems like a great time to be playing with doll making! I hope you will join us for Sharing Saturday later tonight!

Fairy Garden 2012

Come to the side of our house, and you will be greeted by a lovely planter of flowers, but if you look closely you may see a little more.

 You may see the fairy house and pond and if you are really lucky you may see our little fairy, Elizabeth, (Hazel is naming just about everyone Elizabeth these days) dipping her feet in the pond to cool off or tending to her garden.

Last Friday I posted about The Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest. Over the weekend, Hazel and I planted and started working on her garden. I love this idea of bringing some of the fantasy world to live. It gets her planning and thinking even more than she already is with her imagination.

First, we went to the store to pick out some flowers for the garden. She wanted a red geranium, some orange marigolds and various pink and purple petunias. We also bought a large pot to plant them in and start our fairy garden.

We filled the pot with dirt. and then found some sticks to make a fairy house and we used a piece of bark for the roof. We also used an old cupcake liner container to be a pond by the house.  then we planted the flowers where Hazel wanted. Then she added some rocks to be a path. We also added a small fairy that is meant to decorate a flower pot (she has a hook to hang from the edge on her back).

Hazel decided it needed some acorns and pine cones. We put the acorns around the pond. At this point Hazel got distracted and didn't really finish. She talked about pine cones and shells. So we waited a few days and finally added them.

We decorated with the shells and pine cones and we also used some shells as seats by the pond and in the flowers.

Now we will share at The Magic Onions to enter the contest. I hope you will join us in entering.

This is where I link up...

Thanksgiving Crafts, Books and Games

Well this morning we finished our centerpiece turkeys. We got the instructions from Messner Holiday Library Thanksgiving Fun by Judith Hoffman Corwin. It is a book I found at the public library. It had a few crafts I liked but not too many. These turkeys were very easy. You need a toilet paper roll, paper (I used card stock), newspaper and googly eyes and glue (and we used a piece of tape). You could also use paint on the toilet paper roll, but I took the lazy way out and covered it in paper. The toilet paper roll becomes the neck and head. You use a piece of paper rolled with the newspaper stuck inside for stability for the body and cut the tail feathers out of two different colors and add the wings. As you can see Hazel and I had different ideas where the wings should go. Neither of us chose the place the book suggested though Hazel's were closer. Mine are on the body instead of the tail.

Next we read The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri. I used Rachel's squirrel from I HEART CRAFTY THINGS (she shared it at our Sharing Saturday link party, which is still open if you want to share with us). She got the squirrel template from All Kids Network. We decided to gather the same food as the busy little squirrel. So we made a tree trunk for his home and added the food we saw him gather in the book, bird seed, acorns, apples, corn, and berries. The book starts with the leaves are falling so we also glued on some falling leaves. We used real bird seed, acorns and leaves, a Christmas tree ornament apple, and some fall decorations of miniature corn and fake berries.

The next thing we did is we talked about Thanksgiving. I made up some memory games for Thanksgiving. This time I did not put the clear contact paper on them since I don't think they will get played with enough to get that messed up and they are easy enough to make. Hazel is at the age where she doesn't really remember much about Thanksgiving from the past so I thought I could introduce her to the whole story using these cards. Then we could play with them and keep talking about it. I did this in Word and you can download it  Thanksgiving Story Match Game.  If you need another format, please let me know. It is easy to save it as a pdf as well.

I also made a Thanksgiving dinner game, so we could talk about the food she might see at the Thanksgiving table. I figured this might get her excited to try some of it even if she hasn't had it before or didn't like it before. Again I did this in Word and you can download it at Thanksgiving Dinner Match Game Again let me know if you need it in a different format.

To make the game I cut the cards out and cut cardstock into 3 inch by 4 inch rectangles and Hazel and I glue sticked the pictures onto the cardstock.

Nature Art and Activities

Hazel's Pine Cone Fairy

Today was a fun packed day at our house. Hazel did not take a nap, so it was also a long day. We started our morning with an early play date, though both kids slept in so it was later than usual. During which we played inside and outside. Hazel wanted to take a walk with her little wagon so she could collect nature treasures. Of course to her all the leaves are treasures so we didn't get very far.

After our playdate Hazel and I headed over to the Farmer's Market. I promised to buy her some apple cider doughnuts and some apple cider. It was the last week of the Farmer's Market in our town, so it was our last chance. Then we came home and had lunch and tried to nap. I almost fell asleep, but apparently Hazel didn't want to and decided she wanted quiet time today instead. Quiet time is at least half an hour of alone time in her room. She can play with her dollhouse or read her books in there, but shouldn't call me unless it is an emergency. She is getting much better at this. I feel it is important for each of us to have a little down time in our day and a change of pace as well as time to be alone.

Acorn and Pinecone Paintings

Then we started to do some crafts. (Well actually I guess we continued to do crafts since we had done some before our playdate this morning.) These crafts however were done in the garage. I would have done them outside, but after our Father's Day experience outside crafts do not work for us. We started with the acorn painting similar to what I saw on Tippytoe Crafts. However I didn't look to see what they did in awhile, so I went with my own intuition. We also did not have many complete acorns so we threw in some pinecones. We put a piece of white paper in a shirt box and then dipped acorns, acorn caps, and pinecones into fall colored paints. The result was interesting.

Hazel's Fall Treasure Wreath

My First Nature Person

Next we took some of those leaves, pinecones, flowers, acorns (well mostly caps) and glued them onto paper and a cut paper plate wreath.

My Maple Leaf Fairy

Our Oak Leaf Fairy

Then we decided to make leaf people which we then made into leaf fairies. Oh, and Hazel decided to use a pinecone instead of a leaf for one of them.

Then Hazel really wanted to go dig in the garden, so I let her. Yesterday she got to dig to help plant fall bulbs. And I was very glad she wasn't worried about getting dirty like she use to be.

Hazel's Digging Adventure

After digging, we decided to try some more painting. This time we used flowers, leaves and anything we could find as our brushes. We had a great time. Hazel got sick of the flowers, etc. and decided to use her fingers and hands.

Choosing a flower

Dipping it

The Result of Flower Painting

Painting with her hands

Her hands and painting

While she had her hands in the paint I pulled out more fall colored paper and got her to do her handprints for handprint turkey cards for Thanksgiving. I will stash them away for a bit. Then I hosed her off. She somehow ended up with orange paint in her hair. It was definitely a bath night tonight. We did some more painting and crafts, but we will safe those for another post. I figured while she was already dirty to do footprint paintings too. They are our Halloween cards. I'll share our Halloween crafts tomorrow.

Enjoy!