Fun With Leaves – Making A Bowl (Plus Links To Other Crafts).

Clinging on to autumn? Me? Oh ok, you’re right. I feel a bit like the final leaf desperately holding on to the branch of an otherwise bare tree but the last couple of weeks have been peak autumn in Norwich and I have loved all the colours – and don’t really want it to end.

I’ve had a little competition (in my head) to find the most autumnal street in the city and, especially when it wasn’t raining, it was a joy to see all the trees at their most vibrant.

Sadly most of the leaves have now fallen but in a bid to cheer myself up, I decided Freya and I should make some leaf bowls so that we could keep a little bit of autumn all year.

We tried this last year with salt dough and it didn’t really work very well (in fact, it didn’t work at all). The details in the leaves didn’t show up and it was very flaky when it dried (possibly a problem with the mixture).

This year I treated us to a block of air drying clay (£4 from The Works) and we curated our leaves a bit better, going for ones with strong veins (after Freya had thrown them about, that is).

The trick also seems to be getting dry leaves but not too dry so they are crumbly. We pushed them into the clay using a (child’s) rolling pin over the top and then roughly cut them out.

After carefully removing the leaf (and putting them all back outside where we found them) I let them dry in the bowl on top of the radiator for two days, then I took them out of the bowls and gave them another day. Freya is desperate to paint them but I love how they look au natural (although I obviously will let her paint them).

This was a fun craft to do both inside and outside (for added fun you can have a go at identifying the leaves of each tree) and I personally think they look great too.