Pretty frames (tree's leaves, gluing and cutting)

Lately, no to be honest, about a year ago, my Razmoket asked me to help him making frames to give to his grand-parents for Christmas.

We thought about it and went on with the idea of a background in automn leaves with a gluing on top of it. Then come October and the dead leaves and here we go gathering monumental amount of leaves. During this time, I found a bargain on 4 frames at a local discount store : 2.99€ each.

My dozens of leaves, I made them dry between the pages of magazines with dictionnaries on top of them to maintain them flat because they are nicer this way and mainly easier to glu on paper. One must wait 4 days for a complet drying. Using magazines allows to speed up the process because the water from the leaves won't wet the paper.

So we had a beautiful collection of dry leaves which I varnished with spray coating. Some are varnished with non-colored coating, others are varnished with silver glitter coating and the lasts are varnished with golden glitter coating. Doing spraying inside is not a good idea especially in Fall. But my leaves must be kept away from wet weather. You've got to varnish the leaves on both sides to protect them from humidity so from moldiness.

During the Fall holidays, I managed to motivate Razmoket to glu the leaves on paper. He sticked to it during the time of gluing one sheet of paper and half of one... but he was not ready to renounce to the project. So I offered him my help to finish the 2 and a half remaining sheets of paper. Big surprise : at the end of the third one, I wasn't left with enough leaves to cover the entire fourth sheet.

A little bit of thinking, some excavations in my DIY supplies and here came the solution : some orange crepe paper (to remain in the same colors) in the background and a much lighter distribution of the leaves.

2 more days of drying, Razmoket back to school at the end of the holidays and he looses his interest in the project. Even though I remind him that time flies and Christmas is approaching but nothing can make him have interest to the project... The sheet of paper and the frames wait nicely for him in the supplies cupboard. Christmas comes and every thing is still in the cupboard. I tried to interest him for the grand-mothers' day but he persists in his refusal of finishing the project. So be it ! a forced work is a bad work and crafts activities must remain a pleasure.

The spring holidays come and go, the summer holiday are here and still no interest despite of many offers. And last wenesday the chance to take : his new teacher asks to bring images of monuments and artists to make a frame for the book of history of arts. We decided to have a look at the magazines which are in the magazine rack. I jumped on the chance and offered him to look for flowers to finish the frames for this Christmas. And with some motivation here was Razmoket who searches the magazines and selects his images. He make the large cutting and I do the finishing. Then I try again to create more interest by asking him to pick up the sheets of paper to see how the flowers can be put on them. And he goes to the cupboard full of high spirits which have leaved him while gluing the leaves. We also remove from the cupboard the stickers, found in another discount store, for 79 cents the kit of 20 stickers. We used 3 of them.

Finally, Razmoket decides to finish the gluing for the frames.

After having assigned the gluing to every person, I put them in the frames which will fit best in the decoration of the house.

One year for such a project it's a bit long but good things come to those who wait... luckily I'm very patient !!!

I hope this will give you ideas for using tree's leaves and stickers !