Children's crafty fun with autumn leaves

I'm not sure the title of this post is strictly accurate - it might be better something along the lines of 'mummy (forester who loves all things to do with plants) plays with leaves and encourages the children to join in'!  But they did have fun too.  Well, not Finn he's not hugely into crafty things and he wasn't in the mood for humouring me this time.

I think I first spotted the idea of preserving leaves in beeswax on Small Things and decided then and there that I wanted to give it a go.  Somewhere along the line I worked out, probably from another blog or link, that the leaves could be preserved with paraffin wax as well as beeswax.  I have some beeswax but it is such gorgeous stuff I couldn't really justify using it for playing with leaves, much as I'd like to.  So instead I bought some paraffin wax cheaply on Amazon (there's lots of sellers) - and you really don't need much so we'll have plenty more for another time.

And rather than sacrifice a pan we melted the wax in a pyrex bowl** over a pan of simmering water.  I took it off the hob and onto the floor, well protected with dust sheet and newspaper*, leaving the pan underneath to stop the wax cooling too fast.  As long as the leaves had stalks Islay and Angus were able to do this by themselves.  They dry fast and pick up a lovely sheen but otherwise you'd hardly notice any change.

Then we strung the leaves up. Some smaller leaves made little mobiles which are currently dangling from our hall light shade - Katie loves to blow them. Islay's are strung on her wall and Angus' are on his door.  There's a big garland in our downstairs hall too - I guess they'll have to come down at some stage but I don't think I'll tire of them for quite a while.

* Confession time..........mum just in case you think you recognise your kitchen, and your implements, in the making photos, you are right - it is your kitchen.  But please don't panic.  Your kitchen is safe - all the wax drops landed on the newspaper (and one or two on the dust sheet, oops), the pan is pristine and, um, the bowl isn't.  I couldn't work out how to clean it without a load of hassle. So it has been repatriated to our house for use in future waxy adventures and I have ordered you a shiny new one.

** With this in mind anyone else trying the same may wish to use a very old bowl or pan that they don't mind sacrificing.  Either that or have more patience when it comes to washing up!