Here's a great nature craft with beautiful results. Use stamp pads to make leaf prints on recycled cereal boxes, or of course any cardboard, and you'll have a bunch of simply beautiful tags that you can string together to make a wall hanging, or hang in a row as a bunting banner, or even use them a gift tags!
I'm using this to decorate our home for Tu B'Shevat, but of course it's also a great project any time of year, especially for spring or fall when leaf crafts are especially relevant.
I know many of my readers are snow bound, so sources of leaves might be scarce, but you can certainly use artificial leaves from some silk flowers you might have on hand, or even leaves from house plants. I love the way this little wall hanging turned out, and it looks great hanging above my blooming narcissus bulbs.
Just a bit of a warning, this technique can be bit messy, so if you don't want ink all over little or big hands, so you can certainly do leaf printing with paint, which you can learn about in my post from last year here.
You'll Need
- stamp pads in several bright colors
- recycled cereal box cardboard
- a nice stick
- light green rafia or any natural cord
- a large neede or metal skewer to poke holes in the cardboard
How To:
- Cut a bunch of rectangles from your cereal box— make one whose size you like, and use that to trace around to make the rest
- Make prints of leaves onto rectangles by pressing leaf onto stamp pad. Consider using something like a Q-tip to press leaf onto pad evenly, so that fingers will avoid touching stamp pad.
- Remove leaf from stamp pad, place ink side down on cardboard, place a piece of newspaper over the leaf and burnish with you fingers. Lift of paper and leaf to reveal your print!
- Tie cards together vertically, with rafia, wrap some more rafia around the branch and hang!
- Lovely, don't you think?
