Making Paper Leaves

After being inspired by the beautiful paper leaves at Fun at Home with Kids.  Ours didn’t look ANYTHING like them, but the kids had fun and they still looked pretty in the end.

First of all, we used watered down tempera paint to paint the coffee filters.  I was intrigued with the idea of painting coffee filters, but I didn’t want to use their water color sets because I knew that would turn into a muddy mess.  I put just a few colors of paint in cups with lots of brushes and let them go to town painting the flattened out coffee filters.  They did a great job, and we also did a bit of spilling and mopping up with the coffee filters which worked out remarkably well.

Then we hung them up to dry and a few days later cut out leaf shapes.  We used the leaves on their placemats as a guide, but it wasn’t exact.

Connor has been doing a lot of activities at school by tracing the outline of his hand.  He was very eager to try that out – and to trace his sister hand as well, on the dried paper. He loved being able to show off his new skills!

We hung the leaves and hand prints back up in our living room with the clothes pins that we had used when they were drying.  They look pretty, but there is a lot of clutter over there so there won’t be any pictures.  You will just have to take my word for it! Connor also thinks it is important to write his name on every project now!

 

---

//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js //