Autumn leaf prints

My little one is not a big fan of walking – it is too boring. It is possible to get her moving, but she always ends up with some extra activities or picking something off the ground. So this time her incentive was picking leaves. It is autumn and the leaves are starting to change colour and fall off the trees. We managed to get a nice selection.

To be honest, I think it was an incentive for me as well. One my friends recently sent me a photo of a pretty painting she made with her daughter. They made lots of leaf prints on a paper and the result looked like a modern fabric design. I’ve tried that before as well, but last year my little one didn’t have enough patience – so I was looking forward to trying it again.

I have been buying “Painting by Numbers” pictures recently and they always have more paint that the pictures actually require. Thanks to that we had quite a variety of little acrylic paint pots to play around with. With her plasticine set she also got a roll, which was perfect for rolling over the painted leaves, once we put them on the paper. With this simple equipment, we just let our imagination flow and painted all leaves. We ended up using both sides, to see the difference in patterns.

Since there is a little friend’s birthday coming up, my little one got the idea of turning the painting into a card. Acrylic paint dries quite well and I liked the idea. She wanted to add glitter to the wet painting (I suspect she remembered our Christmas project from last year), but I think the picture is perfect as it is. However, I have been wanting to make more shaker cards, so I managed to add some extras – much to her liking. Allow me to present you – our autumn birthday card!