Enchanted autumn trees

We came up with a great way to display our beeswax coated autumn leaves we had collected.
 We made enchanted autumn trees.














We have circles of wood we collected from the woods when some trees were chopped down .  We used these as a base.  With clay, we modelled trees with hollows for owls and elves to dwell.  We added small bracken fungi we found in the woods to the trunk, and bits of moss around the base.  Finally we stuck the stems of the leaves into the wet clay and left our trees to dry.

We have displayed our trees on window sills up the stairs, although they would look enchanting anywhere with a few little autumn creatures or faery folk about too.

Clay faces

Today we added clay faces to some of the trees in our garden.









Fascinating characters!

Nature clay prints

Goodness, it has been so many days since I last posted! We have mostly been outside adventuring. Plant identification and wild foods have been ongoing interests around here and I discovered our flower press was so full of all our beautiful dried specimens.  So, we got out a bag of air drying clay and the cookies cutters and the flower press and made these clay prints with the dried flowers.  So many possibilities with this.


We also made some prints using pine cones and leaf imprints and painted them with watercolours once dry.

And then another variation using fossils and stones, and shells.

We used a knitting needle to poke a hole through the wet clay and once dry, strung some jute string through the hole and hung the prints up on willow sticks.