Leaf art using paper plates

We have done a fair bit of leaf art over the years, but this is a little different because we've used paper plates as a base for the leaves, and this helps so much with the shape of the birds. A lot easier for little makers too.

We pressed our leaves so they're flat to work with and last longer. The downside is they lose some of their vibrant colour and can sometimes be brittle, but it is lovely to be able to keep your leaf art - we still have a butterfly I made with Daisy about 6 years ago!

There's lots of advice online about the best ways to press leaves - ours isn't very scientific! We just arranged them between some sheets of newspaper and put the newspaper under a rug in the kitchen for about a week. Seemed to work okay..
Just make sure you have plenty of leaves and they're different colours and shapes.

For the Thanksgiving Turkey, cut a small section off the bottom of a paper plate.

Then start with the top of the fantail, arranging your leaves along the outer edge of the paper plate so you can't see any white. Think about your colours, it is worth spending a few minutes arranging your leaves into colour piles. We started with reddish orange leaves, then a row of green and then red point leaves and finally yellow. So a darker turkey body would stand out.
Once you've decided on your rows of leaves - brush a good layer of PVA glue onto the paper plate and stick the leaves down - you will probably need to brush a little glue on the overlapping leaves too.

Find a big leave for the turkey body and a smaller one for the head - make sure they stand out against the fantail.

We used small red leaves for the turkey wattle and cut a small triangle for the beak. If your turkey body is light enough you could draw on eyes with a pen, but if it's dark like ours, then use a hole punch to cut two small circles out of a light coloured leaf and colour in the pupils with a black pen.

Rub a bit of glue stick or brush a very thin layer of glue on the Turkey's face, wet your finger to make it easier to pick up the little leaf pieces, and stick them in place.

Put your Turkey plate collage under a book or tray to press it down. Our turkey looks rather dwarfed by its enormous fantail!!

The hen  is based on our recent paper plate hen project. Remove about a third of the plate by cutting away a curved piece from the top, like so. This will give you your basic hen shape.

Brush your paper plate with a good layer of glue and cover the whole thing with overlapping yellow and greenish leaves. You may need to brush more glue on overlapping leaves.

We found oak leaves were great for the hen's fluffy plumage at the back. Let your leaves go over the edge of the plate to cover the line and to give a more fluffy, feathery look. If too much leaf goes over the edge, you can always give it a trim.

You can keep going, but we put our hen under a book to press for a while, before moving onto the wing and head stage.

Chose a nice big leaf for the wing - find some small colourful leaves and arrange and glue them under the edge of the big leaf, before adding to your hen.

Use some thin pointy red leaves for the hen's comb and arrange and glue them underneath the top of the head. Fine a yellow/orange leaf with a strong pointy end for the beak and stick this underneath too (cut away the part of the leaf you don't need).

Use small red leaves for the wattle, trim if you need to, and glue this just under the beak.

Use a black pen to draw on an eye.

Poppy egg carton craft for Remembrance Day

This craft project is close to my heart. As an army wife I can't think about Remembrance Day without getting a lump in my throat. Such a mix of emotions, as we honour those who died in the First and Second World Wars and all the conflicts since, and I remember family and friends in the Forces. Some here, some not.

These poppies are made from egg cartons, and I've gone for three petals instead of four because I thought they looked more poppy-like. I've added a little paper centre too, for the spikey stamens, but you can leave this part out if you like.

You will need:

Egg carton
Scissors
Pencil
Craft glue (we used PVA)
Paint
Black paper (optional)
Paper plate (for the wreath)

Egg cartons come in all shapes and sizes and this does make a difference when you're trying to make flowers.

If the cups are nice and round, then it's easy enough to cut one out like this, with an neat edge and make three, roughly evenly spaced marks, for the gaps between the petals.

The thing is, most egg carton won't have nice round cups, they'll probably look a bit more like this when you cut them out, with a split where the cup joined the middle part of the carton.

So, we're going to work with the split, and incorporate it into our poppy, by using it as one of our three marks, adding two more so they'll all as evenly spaced as possible. (Cut off the rough edges at the top if they're in the way.)

With the scissors, cut down to the base of the egg cup where you've made your two marks.

Then cut and gently curve each of the three petals.

Carefully round off the edges of each petal by snipping the corners. And then very gently, while holding the flower in the middle, carefully push the petals back. This needs to be done with care or the cardboard can rip.

In the picture below I'm snipping off the corners of the round neat shaped egg carton cup.

In the end the round egg carton cup and the one with the splits look pretty similar!

Paint your poppies, remember to do the back of the petals as well, and add a black blob in the middle - this looks much better and more natural if it's a bit irregular, and not too perfect and round.

To make the wreath, paint the rim of a paper plate green. When it's dry, make a hole in the centre of the plate (best done by an adult) and cut out the middle section.

This next step is optional as the poppies look lovely as they are, but the little paper stamens gives them a bit more detail.
Cut a strip of black paper about 0.5-1cm wide and cut into 5cm pieces.

Roll one of the short pieces up, then open it and snip a fringe along one side - roll it up again, but loosely this time.

Brush a good layer of glue in the middle of black centre of your poppy and add the rolled up paper. Let it unfurl a little, but make sure it stays in the glue. Give it a light press and then leave your poppy to dry.

Once dry, press the fringed paper out with your finger. We made 15 poppies for our wreath.

Make a hole in your paper plate wreath and thread through some string so you can hang it up.  Then glue on your poppies.

Pop-up matchboxes

I love a matchbox - any tiny box really, and I bought a job-lot of them for a pound in Home Bargains the other day. I've been wanting to try a simple pop-up matchbox idea, and Halloween seemed like the perfect time!

It took a few attempts to work out where to cut and where to stick... but we got there in the end! And once you've made the pop-up mechanism, you can add any ghostly, ghastly ghoul you like..


1. Rather handily, our matchbox had lines on it already, but basically you need to draw two lines, a few cms apart, down the middle of your box top.

Take them really close to one end, and draw a line across (this is important! See above), leaving the other open (about 0.5cm from the edge). We've coloured this open end with the black pen so it's a bit easier to see which end's which. (And this black mark will become dracula's shoes later!)

2. Adult help is needed for this next part - use some nail scissors or similar to pierce a hole through the line on the matchbox top (keep the scissors closed, press down firmly and twist from side to side). Once you've pierced through, cut carefully along the 3 lines you've drawn, leaving the end with the space (or the thick black mark in the picture).

3. Fold this flap of card right back and press firmly.

4. Then fold the flap of card in half and press the crease firmly again.

5. Cut a strip of paper, about the same width as the card strip, and roughly 4cm long.

6. Glue a good section of it under the card flap and let the glue dry.


7. Now the more fiddly bit, because you need to glue the other end of the paper strip to the end of the matchbox drawer.

Take the match box drawer out of the cover and dab some glue at the end and bottom of the cardboard drawer. Then push it back in from the thick black mark side (not the paper strip side), gluey end first, until it's half in, and

Take the match box drawer out of the cover and dab some glue at one end of the cardboard drawer (end side and bottom). Then gluey end first, push it back in from the thick black mark side (not the paper strip side), until it's half in, and you can see the gluey end through the hole in the top of the matchbox cover.

8. You need to stick the paper strip to the glue, this is tricky, so we used the end of a pencil to push the paper strip into the glue (end side and bottom).

It is really important to get the cardboard strip as close as you can to the edge of the drawer - there should be a small gap, but it must be small, or the mechanism won't pull back properly. (See how close it is in the photo. We've drawn a black line along the top edge of the matchbox drawer, so you can see how close it is to the edge of card strip.)

9. Once it's dry you can try out your pop-up box! When you push the drawer back into the cover,  the middle section should go flat. If it doesn't, then the card strip needs to be glued closer to the end of the drawer. If the box is too tight and won't shut properly then the card strip has been glued too close to the end of the drawer and needs more of a gap.

11. Draw your Halloween figure on some paper - make it roughly the same size as the matchbox.

12. Make sure the matchbox is open so the mechanism is sticking up, and glue your ghoul to the side of the folded card strip that isn't attached to the paper strip, lining up the bottom edge of your figure with the crease.

 13. To make an easy pop-up match box surprise, cut a thin strip of cereal box card or similar and fold it a few times to make a spring mechanism. Glue or stick this inside the drawer part of the matchbox, near one end. Draw your bat, spider or ghost or whatever you like and glue to the top of your cardboard spring. We also made a ghost from some tissue paper!

You could decorate the matchbo too - draw around the box on some paper, and design a spooky cover! Cut out and glue on top of the matchbox.