2 Leaf Art Projects For Young Kids

We got all leafy up in here, since they’re starting to fall all over our yard and all. Every year I forget how beautiful they are until we pick some up and look closely.

Now is a good time to celebrate fall leaves with leaf art projects. I was inspired, so I came up with a project! (Of course.)

Our first activity was probably one you’ve seen all over the blogs, and I slapped up some clear contact paper on our front door, cut out some Fall-colored leaves and gave them to Beckett to arrange in a delightful composition.

(Yes, that is total badass duct tape holding the contact paper to the glass.)

After that I was left with a whole bunch of colored card stock pieces with leaves cut out of them. This is when the fun projects usually start- you have random materials, and you have to figure out what to do with them.

That’s when I decided we would try something I’ve only seen done on fabric: freezer paper stenciling.

Materials:

• Freezer paper
• Iron
• Cut leaf-shape Paper or Marker
• Craft knife
• Watercolor paper (This pad is such a great deal)
• Crayons and/or Watercolors and brushes

Cut your freezer paper to the size of the watercolor paper.

Freehand draw some leaves on the freezer paper, or trace some leaves you’ve collected, or trace some previously cut-out leaves (like we did). Depending on how old your child is, they can do this part.

 

Now it’s up to you to cut out the leaves with a craft knife. You could use scissors, but you’ll get a much smoother line, and it will be much faster if you use a craft knife.

 

Place the freezer paper, wax-side down, on top of the watercolor paper, and iron on low-ish (I had my iron set one setting up from the lowest.) The best way to iron it on is to hold the iron flat down on the paper for about 10 seconds at a time in different areas. Sliding it across the paper just moved it around too much. The freezer paper will bubble in places, but  if you keep working it will stick to the watercolor paper.

 

Now it’s finally time to hand everything over to your kids. Beckett and I ventured outside to collect some specimens. We chose a wide range of leaf colors and brought them inside to inspect them. I had Beckett pull out the colors from the crayon box that most closely resembled the leaf colors.

 

At this point, I used the iron to warm up a leaf area at a time on the paper, and then let him color in that leaf. I may be slightly taken with warm, melty crayon-drawing since working on our crayon painting project.

I had him use only 2 colors per leaf so they wouldn’t get muddy-looking.

 

 

 

 

 

Next up I broke out the watercolors, and encouraged him to use colors that looked similar to the leaves. (By this time he was a little tired of art-making, so I finished up for him.) I suggest only doing one of these projects at a time if you have wee ones….

 

Don’t these look cool, though? Beckett was pretty excited to peel the paper off and see the leaves appear perfectly on the paper.

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