Decorating our home for Halloween is one of my favorite ways to kick off the holidays. Since Annabelle has been having a great time exploring her artistic talents (making window clingers and other art projects are fun and meaningful ways that our family spends an afternoon or evening together), I thought we might try several fall decorating projects. To get started, I checked out ideas for fall window scenes and decided that we would use pumpkins, leaves, and bats. I found this great page full of templates on MarthaStewart.com, and selected the bat template. Basically I traced the bats and Annabelle helped to cut them out. For the pumpkins, I freehanded the shape and turned them over to Annabelle for her choice coloring skills.
To create our leaf window clingers, we played around a bit. For starters, we collected leaves, pressed them for 2 weeks in large and heavy books, and then got busy with our art. Using non-toxic tempera paints, Annabelle used her fingers and paint brushes to paint the leaves. Later, I pressed these painted leaves as well as a few au-natural leaves between wax paper. The other paper leaves are those created by tracing or pressing down on “real” leaves by positioning paper over the leaf or leaves.
Creating our very own fall decorations is wonderful for a couple of reasons; first, making our art inspires genuine creativity in us and our children, and second, homemade decorations take less of a toll on Mamma Earth. On a similar note, it looks like Mama Bird at Surely You Nest is on the same wavelength. She just posted her solutions to preparing for the holidays in “The Sweet Cha-Ching of the Holidays.”
Ooh, and I almost forgot! This post is my response to Inspire Me Thursday’s Paper Cut theme.
What a fun way to cut, play with color, and connect with the family! Happy fall decorating!
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Thanks so much for the shout out and even more for the great craft idea. You’re taking it up a notch from my annual leaves-ironed-in-wax-paper!
Mama Bird, Thank you for the great post full of ideas for a green holiday season. I was happy to see your post and thought it worked nicely with our arts and craft project. Happy decorating!
this is great artwork! thanks for sharing :-)
I have got to get busy!!! I love the all the fall leave decorations! One year when my son was little, we gathered leaves and I strung them on string to make “curtains” for our living room. So many fun things to do. :)
those are so cool. i especially like the leaves. we might have to do that here ourselves. :)
Marjieluv, thank you for the compliment. Our family loves getting artsy, even simple projects like this.
Michelle, we may actually try to make leaf garland or curtains as you described. I had come across a similar project in a children’s crafting book. If you do this project, please let me know. I’d love to hear your tips and thoughts on making it a practical project for a 2 year old.
Crunchy Domestic Goddess/Amy, as I mentioned (in this comment) this was a fun and easy project to do. I bet your kiddos will have a blast with it.
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