The colours of spring and autumn totally captivate me – I stare and stare at a tree in blossom or covered in golden red leaves trying to imprint the image on my soul so that I can access that beauty once it goes, which invariably it does. On one level I find this rather gutting – like creating lots of masterpieces and then putting them on the ground to decay. I know this is the cycle of life but something in me still wants to cling to and preserve what I see.
At the moment, we have our lovely grape vine outside our dining room window, covered in leaves of the most luscious red / green / orange colours. I picked a whole bunch of them the other day and they sat in a bowl on our dining table, looking pretty and awaiting some use. As the days passed, they started to dry. It was then I had an ‘aha’ moment – an idea of how to use this beautiful colour and preserve something of the memory of autumn into the winter months.
A few minutes later, Isabella and I sat with our hands in the bowl and started crunching. (The noise, feeling and smell of this is highly recommended!). After a few crunches we had our very own “leaf glitter”.
We then decided to do pictures of trees, using some twigs for the trunk and branches and a liberal sprinkling of our leaf glitter for the leaves – lo and behold we have captured something of the beauty of autumn for several more weeks at least!
We will try doing it with different leaves soon – there are some beautiful yellows dropping from a tree near our house at the moment. Oh, and the pinks from that bush near the park…
Lots of fun, my kids would love that.
Oh wow! I love the idea of crunching up the leaves. At first I actually thought the first image was a very cleverly textured painting. Lovely!
Thank you
Now hurry and go get those leaves before they all turn mushy!
great way to use those beautiful leaves–
you are just one totally creative lady! Can I come over to yours?
Amelia.x
Gorgeous purples in the leaves, have you tried dying cloth them? No idea how to do it, thought you might! I am going to buy a book to find out more about this as clearly I don't have enough to do!