Watercolor Autumn Garland

Is there nothing you CAN'T make beautiful with liquid watercolors? We've used them to dye macaroni, as the color base for bathtub puffy paint and as part of our watercolor and batik on paper experiment but my favorite media to drip the saturated color on has to be coffee filters.

I love watching Claire concentrate with her tongue poking out of pursed lips (so like her father) as she watches the colors run together trying to create the perfect shade of "turk-a-boys." That's turquoise for those of you not schooled in Claire-speak.

We've got a giant tree filled with round colorful leaves and I persuaded Claire to donate a few of her creations for a little autumn garland for the mantle. This is inspired by Rebecca Cooper's St. Patrick's Garland which I've been drooling over for the past few months. I just adored her use of book pages as background and found quite a few to tear apart upon unpacking in our new house (who knew my old computer science texts would be irrelevant just a few short years after college).

Pack of 6 Liquid Watercolors for $12.98

If you're looking for an affordable set of liquid watercolors, check these out, a pack of 6 for about $13 has lasted us well over a year. They're super saturated and can be diluted to make them stretch. I also love the ones from Discount School Supply. 

Happy Painting!

Celebrating Autumn's Splendor

I know, I know...two foliage posts in a row - but I can't help it! The beautiful leaf rubbings we worked on earlier are still on display but this is an even easier project to commemorate the season. Walking with Claire in the yard always turns up a few colorful leaf specimens to work with, here's the unique way we're displaying them:

I picked up a few $0.99 frames while shopping at Ikea recently. My original thought was to put some letters in there or label things on our nature table (more to come on that another day) but Claire thought a small maple leaf might look nice in there too. I think she had a great idea. The light shines through beautifully and I love that we can see both sides of the leaf.

What do you think? Isn't this a gorgeous and simple way to showcase autumn leaves?