Working with your hands and tapping into your creativity can be a fun adventure, and you’ll also have handmade gifts to share this fall! Celebrate the beauty of autumn and get crafty—arts and crafty!
BRING NATURE’S BEAUTY INDOORS
Get inspired by nature’s beauty and collect cool things on your next outdoor walk with the kids. What’s out there this season? Gather acorns, colorful leaves, pine cones, gumballs (those prickly brown balls with spikes), and seedpods for your DIY projects this fall.
ARTS & CRAFTS WITH LOVELY LEAVES
Place a leaf on scrap paper, put a blank white paper over it and rub with a crayon or oil pastel. The leaf’s intricate anatomy will take shape in your colorful leaf rubbing. Leaf rubbings make lovely greeting cards. Use different leaf shapes and a variety of colors for a montage effect. Try lifelike shades of yellow, orange, red, green, and brown, or make them fancifully hued in any shades of the color spectrum.
You can make a real leaf mandala by punching a hole at the bottom of each leaf and threading them with yarn, raffia or hemp string. Make one to wear as a garland for your hair. And, while making fashion accessories out of leaves, why not make some dangly leaf earrings? Whether matched or mismatched, they’ll be fun to wear as long as they last.
What else can you use to beautify fall leaves? Add some sparkle by gluing on glitter. How about making your leaf into a face with googly eyes? Try gluing leaves to smooth stones for decorations, indoors or out in the garden. You can even glue decorated leaves to pumpkins!
SEASHELL ARTS & CRAFTS
Summer may be the typical time to head to the beach, but why not take a trip to the ocean when it’s a bit cooler? You may not feel like getting into the water, but it’s the ideal temperature to take a stroll barefoot along the shore as your toes sink into the sand and surf. While you’re at it, you can search for seashells. Don’t just pick what you think are the prettiest ones that are perfectly shaped. Some of the broken shells can be ideal for jewelry and other DIY arts and crafts projects. Find the ones the ocean already drilled holes in, or use a Dremel and make them into beautiful sea-made jewelry. Don’t forget to bring a bag or bucket with you, rinse off the sand and sea residue when you get home and let them dry out before using them.
Hair barrettes are super easy to make. You can glue seashells on with a glue gun or Gorilla Glue, but be careful not to glue your fingers together! If seashells have holes in them, thread a small piece of pliable wire through the hole, attach the wire to a jump ring and then add a silver or gold chain, or a linen, nylon, or hemp string to make a simple—but oh, so pretty—necklace.
DRIED, PRESSED FLOWER ARTS & CRAFTS
Press flowers and herbs between tissues placed between pages of old catalogs or novels. Create your own floral and herbal bookmarks, or glue flowers you have pressed to cardstock for handmade greeting cards. There’s nothing like getting a bouquet on a card in the mail to put a smile on your face and warmth in your heart. You can also add pressed flowers to a canvas or poster board by gluing them on and painting around them. Love music? Print out some sheet music and glue the dried flowers to it. Rice paper and handmade paper decorated with dried rose petals and lavender are particularly beautiful.
Not only are these creative projects fun to do, they are even more fun to give as gifts when you’re done! Your kids’ family, friends, and neighbors will be thrilled and honored to receive works of art from aspiring artists. It will definitely brighten their day and light up their life.
There’s so much you can make yourself and with your loved ones. . . . So, enjoy DIY arts and crafts this season! Make some apple cider and put your creativity and hands to work!
