October 22, 2012

• Autumn Leaf Dusting!

  It’s Fall, Y’all!  Actually, this has been THE fastest fall I’ve ever seen.  We had gorgeous color *BOOM!*… and then everything fell *POOPF!*… and now what’s left on the trees is rusty.  Usually we have a week or two of reds and oranges and light yellows, but this year?  *BOOM!*  *POOPF!*

  I have a confession:  during the fall feasts, everything normal pretty much goes out the window.  It does.  I don’t write normal blogs, I don’t school, we don’t go for walks at the lake, we don’t work on projects… it’s like life switches to a different track for a few weeks, and then we switch back, later.  Which is good – I believe that it’s exactly what He wants from us! – but it also means that pen-pals don’t get anything for about a month or so.

  But now we’re back to schedule. School is in session for it’s second week.  And Friday was PayDay, which means Saturday was our day to do a project for the penpals. ((NoTe:  Often I count the penpal project as our handiwork for school.  This week, it was a bonus project, as handiwork has been to try to get our costumes going this past week.  Which will get even MORE intense this week!))

  I got the idea from Pinterest.  Naturally.  ((giggles!))  You can find the link to my Pinterest board at the bottom of the left column on my Xanga, here.  Anyhow, I loved this picture (<<see that?!), and wanted to try it with the kids.  So I decided that the best way to do it was to make it into a postcard for the penpals!

  First we went out and collected leaves.  And considering we live on the edge of the woods, we have a LOT of different leaves.  Even more in my yard – I landscaped this place like you wouldn’t BELIEVE when we moved in, and seven years later, it’s beautiful, FYI.  Seriously… when the UPS guy or the mail lady show up to drop stuff off, they always comment on how gorgeous our yard is.  Which is kinda funny… because I don’t weed.  ((Snakes.))  It just grows, and grows back every year.  And it’s beautiful.  And FULL of leaves for us!

  Then – because I didn’t know what they were doing in this Pinterest photo (it looks like some sort of dusting powder they’re flicking at the leaves?) I thought we’d just use sponge squares and stamping ink over the leaves.  And my sponges were kind of old and fell apart at a touch, so we ended up using cotton balls. 

  All of which… btw… wasn’t optimal, to coin an Obama phrase.  The leaves had to be held down, because we were patting them with the sponge, and they tended to move around.  It was rather a pain in the p’toot.  But first you sponge ALL of the leaves, then pull off the top one, and sponge the next group, then pull off another, then sponge the next… until they’re all gone.  Some of the leaves had a natural curl – maybe we should’ve pressed them with an iron first?  PROBABLY we should’ve pressed them with an iron, first.  This is WHY having the Pinterest link actually lead to instructions is always nice, by the way!

  Anyhow…. here’s mine.  It didn’t turn out too badly at all… but it was rather plain with just the brown, so I sponged (cotton balled?) some orange and yellow around it to add a little *pop* to the finished effect.

  Isaac’s won’t be posted, because he pretty much shoved the leaves all around and sponged blobs everywhere, instead.  The boy doesn’t really have much patience or precision, yet… so I gave him mine to send to his penpal.  It was the involvement that counted, anyhow.  ((wink!))

  But here are Lydia’s (she has two penpals):

  
  
  Didn’t they turn out nicely?  We really liked this – I’m tempted to try it again, another time.  Only in our next try, I plan to use a watercolor wash and splatter it over the leaves, so we don’t have to touch them.  And we’ll iron the leaves, first.  So we learned a few things, and had a great time!

  • 10:56 am
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