Thursday, October 14, 2010

Tutorial--trees for your autumn nature table...

...or any ol' display.


The initial inspiration came from a post where someone was using watercolored coffee filters as the material for cutting autumn leaves for a window decoration.  I spent nearly an hour haunting my favorite craft blogs trying to find it to no avail.  If you find it, let me know so that I can link to it.  [NB: thank you, City Wife, for finding it for me!  It is here.]

Anyway, I pulled out my coffee filters and my much-loved liquid watercolors and laid the filters out on newsprint.  Then I sprayed the filters with water, and dropped nice big splats of paint onto them.  I love watching watercolors spread out on wet paper.  I used yellow, green, orange red and brown.  My photos of the painted filters came out rather fuzzy and uninspiring, unfortunately.  While they were drying, I went out and searched our shrubs for some dead, tree-like branches for my trees.  I found some that fit the bill very well, and, because I needed them to have longer "trunks", I used masking tape to attach them to some sticks.

When the filters were dry, I folded them into eighths and cut little leaves from them.

Now comes the crazy part:  I hot-glued the leaves to the branches.  Other glues were not drying quickly enough.  So I burned my fingers and pulled off the countless glue-threads, and it worked pretty well.


Stick them in a vase or tuck them in somewhere for some autumn joy!

[For more autumn joy, here is another autumn leaf tutorial!]


27 comments:

  1. pretty. It seems like gluing all of the leaves would take a long time though.

    I think I am going to do this project though.

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  2. I don't know...I work pretty fast, but I got the leaves all glued on in about 30-40 minutes...part of that time was spent picking glue off my fingers!

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  3. Yours turned out a LOT better than ours :-D. I might peel the little suckers off my sliding glass door and hot glue them on to sticks; that looks so awesome!

    The idea was originally posted http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/2010/09/autumn-window-display.html

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  4. Oh those watercolor leaves are gorgeous - what a great idea.
    Warm wishes, Tonya

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  5. What a beautiful idea! The leaves are so lovely...

    It would like nice pretty much anywhere you decide to place them.

    Thank you for sharing.

    M.

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  6. that is a splendid tree!
    those leaves are bee-you-ti-ful!
    and i love your nature display.
    and the soothing color of your walls.
    and your description of gemma's screeching!

    well, i guess i just plain love u!!
    xo.

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  7. It is so beautiful! Maybe when my littlest one is older and won't destroy it. What pretty leaves.

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  8. Beautiful! I love this! I don't have liquid watercolors so I'll see what I can do with what I have. Thanks so much for the inspiration!

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  9. I found you through Crafty Crow, but see we read many of the same blogs!

    Beautiful trees, we are going to have to try that...especially for November, when it's bare here in MN before the snow flies!!

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  10. Those are very pretty. I hope I remember to make them next fall. I will use glue dots instead of hot glue. It will cost a little more but then all of the kids can participate too.

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  11. Hi Nadja... just thought I would share that the kids and I did use this idea. The tress came out lovely, and the kids had fun making the leaves!

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  12. This is gorgeous!! I'm definitely filing this away for a rainy day craft project with the kiddos! Thanks so much for sharing. God bless!

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  13. your nature table is gorgeous, what a beautiful project!

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  14. Hi! I was looking for an art project to do today, and I came across this and decided to try it. It turned out really awesome-- not as beautiful as your pictures, but it came out well! I'm not sure how to attach a picture, but here's a link to a picture on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?id=1711216&pid=36334685&fbid=625220141678

    Thanks for the inspiration!

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  15. Cara, those look great! Thanks for sharing that with me!

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  16. Exactly what we need. We live in Okinawa, Japan and are missing autumn in a terrible way. A few of these around the house might help ....thanks!

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  17. Oh wow! These are stunning! I just came across your blog via a link to this project on Meet The Dubiens and I'm so smitten! I would love to link to this if you didn't mind.

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  18. Hello, Thank you for sharing ~ your tree is beautiful! Please can you tell me what book you have used on your display it looks really lovely! Thank you.

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  19. Yes, Tracey...it is Around the Year by Elsa Beskow.
    http://www.amazon.com/Around-Year-Elsa-Maartman-Beskow/dp/0863150756

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  20. Hi,
    I love this for my house and really love this idea for my preschool class! We usually make flowers using coffee filters, but I never did fall leaves like this with them! Instead of hot glue in the class, I can have them even use glue sticks and glue the leaves on a paper tree. So pretty! Thanks for sharing it.

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  21. These are beautiful. I'll be linking to them on WeeFolkArt.com's Facebook page. Thanks for sharing :)

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  22. This looks awesome! Did you just use watercolors or was it a different kind of paint? Thanks! I'm looking forward to decorating my house for our first time hosting Thanksgiving. :)

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  23. I just used liquid watercolors, Jenna. Any good quality watercolor will work. The colors are less vibrant in cheap ones.

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