More Than a Little

I went through some old school papers recently and found a science project that I made when I was about ten or eleven.  It was a leaf collection, put together in a folder with different leaves carefully stuck onto the pages and sealed with contact paper.  I have a vague memory of doing this, surprisingly, and leaving it to the last minute and therefore going the lamination route because I didn’t have time for pressing leaves or anything fancy like that.  Evelyn was very impressed with Mommy’s apparent love of leaves, so she spent the weekend collecting leaves from outside to bring to me.  (How sweet!)  Anyway, clearly I needed to do something with my new collection, so we made a little college using the same medium as the original project–DIY lamination. :)

I was fairly happy with the results except that the contact paper wrinkled a bit.  I also found that taking photos of it with flash was hopeless, so this doesn’t really do it justice but as far as I can tell, the sun is not planning on coming back out until at least May so I gave up on getting a better picture.

Instructions

1. Collect leaves, pine needles and other bits of nature, as desired. I had thought of adding flowers but I was more interested in getting started than on planning more supplies. The native was getting restless.
2. Cut a piece of clear contact paper and peel the back off of it. Lay it down, sticky side up, on the table. Tape the corners to keep it from shifting. You’ll need a border to close it properly, so I also put a piece of construction paper, cut to shape, under the contact paper as a visual guide and told Evie to only put the things on the colored section. It worked really well.
3. Place leaves, pine needles or whatever you want on the sticky contact paper.  Try not to leave finger prints.  We started with the grass, and I gave it the basic tree shape while Evie continued to work on grass, and then we put the leaves on together.
4. When satisfied, place another piece of clear contact paper on top, thereby sealing your work.
5. Enjoy!

It’s not fancy kid art, but we had a good time making it.  :)  I think we’ll do more contact paper art soon because Evie found it pretty fascinating to stick her pieces down on sticky stuff.

While I’m still talking kid crafts, I’ll add that earlier in the day, we also made a Valentine Heart Lei, as per the instructions here.  I had everything cut out and ready when we started, which made it one of the least stressful craft projects we’ve done in a while.  She usually gets pretty impatient while I get out the supplies.  (Kiddo, if you take a nap every day like you did on Monday, I will have more time to set up crafts. You might want to give it a try. Please?)

Such concentration!

It turned out pretty cute, though I ended up untying it and hanging it on our fireplace instead of using it as a lei.