October Craft Fun for All Ages

Children love to do leaf prints and it's a great way to go to the "outdoor classroom" and learn about trees. Be sure to get a good Tree identification book that has good pictures of the leaves to take along on your outing. When you collect leaves for your prints, choose sturdy ones with varied shapes. Try to get ones that lay flat and leave some of the stem on them. This will help you hold the leaf without messing up the paint. Some of the leaves I like to use are:

Sweet Gum
Maple
Oak (there are many different ones)
Beech
Sassafras
Grape
Chinese Tallow (Hate the invasive tree, but the leaf is nice.)
Redbud

When you get home with your leaves. Put lots of newspaper on your work table. Go through the leaves and identify the underside. This is where the veins are and this is the side where you'll apply the paint. In the picture above, I have placed most of the leaves with the underside up. The Water Oak leaves in the picture above, show one of the top and one of the underside.

Next, look at the item that you want to put the prints on. Pick out leaves and place them in a pleasing design. The picture above shows part of a T-shirt that I did. I like to arrange the leaves so they look like they are drifting down from the trees. If you have a hole or a smudge, just overlap another leaf in a darker color.

When picking your project, keep the age of the child in mind. Young children do better with larger leaves and smaller "canvases". Probably one to three leaves on a small object like a place mat would be a good project for preschool or Kindergarten children.

If you are doing a T-shirt, you can make your own form out of a large cardboard box. Stretch the T-shirt over the form and secure the sleeves and extra material in the back with straight pins. Don't stretch it too tight, just tight enough so that it will lay flat. You can use straight pins (like quilter's pins) to secure other cloth items to a piece of cardboard.

Place a leaf with the underside up on a piece of newspaper. Using a large watercolor brush and fabric paint color the underside of one of your leaves. You can use all one color or paint some like nature with 2 or 3. You may need to squirt small amounts of the different colors of fabric (or tempera or acryllic for paper) in a disposable plastic plate. Thin with water a little if needed. Experiment and do some test prints first before you try it on the item.

You can do a structured design, or a more natural one. Just have fun! When you are happy with your creation, lay it flat, up somewhere out of the way to dry.

Besides leaves, vegetables and fruits make good stampers. Mini pumpkins cut in half are great for Halloween shirts. Apples make nice fall designs, too.

Carolina Chickadee in Silverbell by naturegirl7

When I was a school librarian, I used to drool through the Kidstamps catalog. Many of their designs are by renowned illustrators of childrens books. I tried to get at least one of their stamps for each holiday. My favorite one for Halloween (besides the dragon) is from Bruce Degen's Little Witch and the Riddle (1986).

My next favorite which could be Halloween or anytime is "Viola Swamp is Watching You" by James Marshall, also from Kidstamps.

I've searched the Web and I can't find a good link for Kidstamps. I hope they fix their website soon and when they do, I'll post it here.

However, some are available on ebay! Hooray for ebay.