When autumn comes into its own, painting the world around with colorful fun colors, you want to wander endlessly in the garden, rustling with fallen leaves. And in order to keep the mood of autumn longer, you can create compositions with your own hands from natural materials that this season gives people in abundance. An excellent product will be created by Ekibana from leaves with their own hands "Autumn". In it, in addition to bizarre forms of foliage, you can use both dried flowers and vegetables with fruits.
What can be done?
Of the materials that the autumn presents, you can make various compositions together with the children. These will be absolutely free crafts made from raw materials, but their value will consist in the warmth of the relationship between an adult and a child. In addition to moral benefit, such a pastime is also beneficial for children physically: fine motor skills of the hands develop, which are necessary for speech, sensory abilities, imagination. This is especially important for young children in the early stages of their development.
Natural materials will allow you to create a simple craft and a children's toy, applique, herbarium, educational designs. An excellent craft will be the Ekibana from autumn leaves.
Adult themes developed by designers will allow you to place exquisite panels, paintings and compositions on the walls of rooms for which you can use mixes from foliage of different species of trees. Chestnut, maple and oak leaves go well together.
Preparation of materials
Before making an Ekibana or other composition, it is important to properly prepare the source material. This is done in several ways:
- Autumn leaves are laid between the sheets of albums and pressed on top with a load so that they do not curl when dried. For the bookmark choose healthy, whole leaves. This preparation method is suitable for the manufacture of herbariums, children's applications or sheet collages.
- To make voluminous crafts and bouquets using autumn foliage, the latter must be processed in a special way, which will be discussed below. This is necessary so that the foliage does not crack during twisting, is supple and does not lose its original appearance. This method is suitable for the manufacture of topiary or dried flower compositions.
With the proper preparation of raw materials - leaves - crafts will retain a beautiful appearance, and the composition of the leaves will not turn into twisted, shapeless, cracked masses. After all, it is possible to make from foliage the likeness of roses, cornflowers, chrysanthemums, daisies and water lilies. Moreover, their color will not only be natural - red or yellow - products can be painted with acrylic painted primers. On top of the gel pen, you can apply a variety of patterns, and then varnish.
Activities with the child: ideas for Ekibana
For handicraft, you can suggest the following ideas:
- Application. For her, you can use dried castings and flowers for herbarium. On a thick sheet of paper, you need to decompose the available materials, combining them in color and shape. When the desired location is reached, each element is glued using PVA glue or photo glue.
- Ekibana collage on the theme of "Autumn". Such a composition is done under the frame. A layer of large bright leaves of dark colors is laid out on a thick sheet of cardboard or paper, on top - smaller and greener, and at the very top - small bright yellow and red leaves. You can add autumn dried flowers to the mix, getting a three-dimensional picture. And also from foliage and flowers it is possible to lay out various figures.
- Beautiful compositions can be composed of leaves, flowers and pine needles, fixing them on cardboard with wire.
- Fallen branches are fixed in the form of a tree, and leaves and flowers are fixed on it.
Preparation of raw materials for bulk crafts
Volumetric Ekibans from the natural material “Autumn” are not made by folding dried leaves, as they will break. Therefore, the material for such work is processed in a special way.
It is done like this:
- Prepare a solution consisting of 200 ml of glycerol and 400 ml of pure cold water.
- In a dense plastic bag, evenly and gently place fresh fallen leaves and fill them with the prepared solution.
- The edge of the package containing the contents is hermetically sealed with a heated knife or carefully sealed with duct tape.
- The package must be left for three to four days in a dark, cool place, and then taken out and laid out on a paper towel to dry.
The leaves processed by this method will be flexible, retain their original shape for a long time, and from them it will be possible to add flowers of various shapes to create a stylish and original composition of leaves.
Preparation of material for flat compositions
For flat crafts, there are several methods for drying raw materials:
- Drying with a hot iron. Autumn foliage and some small flowers are dried with an iron. To carry out this operation, the raw material is laid out exactly on thick cardboard and covered with thin paper. Then all this is gently ironed until the moisture evaporates. The iron should not be very hot.
- Drying by natural method. For this method, the collected flowers, folded in bunches, are hung on a rope in a dry room, where there is good ventilation. Bunches are located inflorescences down. “Autumn” made from such material Ekibana from leaves with its own hands will have an original natural look.
- Drying in the oven. This method is great for drying and preparing large single flowers (roses, tulips, peonies) for making Ekibana and compositions. To do this, the oven does not set a very high temperature, within sixty degrees Celsius, and the raw materials laid out on the base are slowly dried. In this case, you need to carefully monitor so that the flowers do not begin to turn brown or lose shape.
- Volumetric drying of flowers. This method of drying in the best way preserves the color and natural shape of autumn flowers, of which the Ekibana of the leaves will consist. With their own hands, autumn can be saved in this way for a long time. After cutting, the flower is placed in pre-calcined and dried sand for about one month. A container for this can serve as a box having a fine mesh bottom and a retractable bottom. Terry bulk flowers, such as roses, dahlias or lilies, are placed with the stalks down, and flat inflorescences-baskets of flowers such as asters, buttercups, forget-me-nots or daisies, have the stems up. At the same time, holding the flower in the desired position, it is carefully sprinkled in layers of sand to the top.
Tools for work
Before you make Ekibana, you need to prepare the following tools for work:
- scissors, for adults - large long, and for children - small with rounded tips;
- stacks - for children and a clerical knife - for adults;
- an awl with a thin sting and a comfortable handle;
- manicure tweezers, in which the front part is brought together and twisted - for twisting some parts and wire;
- long tweezers - for small parts;
- thin, strong and flexible copper wire for frame crafts and toys 0.35 mm in diameter;
- foil paper and foil for decoration;
- threads and sewing needle - for fastening parts and bouquets.
Materials for work
In order for Ekibana to be created from leaves with her own hands, Autumn, materials may need such:
- different types of paper in thickness, color and density (wallpaper, corrugated, parchment, velvet, copy, wrapping and landscape);
- multi-colored polymer clay and plasticine - for sculpting additional details of compositions;
- glue BF, PVA or "Mars";
- brushes and gouache or watercolor paints are useful for coloring materials and flat compositions;
- for volumetric work you will need soft squirrel brushes and acrylic paints.
Rose from fallen autumn leaves
Ekibana on the theme of "Autumn" will decorate the interior in an original and stylish way, if it contains such a flower as a rose. You can make it yourself without much difficulty.
You will have to work creatively with plain maple leaves, strong strings, sunflower oil and golden colors. The foliage is pre-treated with a glycerin solution, as described above.
Roses from maple leaves are large, so for a bouquet of them, five or seven will be enough. The foliage will be the same maple leaves.
Do-it-yourself Ekibana from the leaves “Autumn” is performed in the following sequence:
- Fold the maple leaf in half with the front side out and twist it into a roll.
- Insert the bud into the base of the second maple leaf of the same color.
- A second leaf to wrap the bud, forming a rose petal.
- Next, take the next maple leaf and repeat the operation with offset. The more such rose petals are made, the larger the flower will turn out. For the appearance of a blossoming flower, each next leaf needs to be shifted slightly lower.
- A little above the leaf petioles, fix the craft with a thread - and the first flower is ready.
- Make another five to seven similar flowers.
- To preserve the appearance - grease maple roses with sunflower oil and cover with golden paint.
At the final step, you need to take a small flowerpot, place several maple leaves in it and place the roses in the form of a bouquet between them. Ekibana is ready and will delight the look for a long time.