Tree glitter pictures…from the archive

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…