Sunday 31 July 2011

Corn dragonflies

Tomorrow is Lughnasadh or Lammas, the first of three pagan Autumn harvest festivals, in many different cultures people celebrate at harvest time. So today we are making corn dragonflies, my children are a little young to weave corn dollies so we have gone for something a little easier.


These are some things we collected from the garden, the corn stalk (or barley) had grown up under one of the bird feeders from dropped seeds and the leaves have come from our willow tree.


This is the layout for our dragonfly before the sticking commences, large googly eyes will be added at the front end to get the dragonfly look. We have also tried to pair up the leaves to match in size, with two larger ones at the front and two smaller ones at the back.


As you may notice in the above photograph, it is possible to slightly lift the individual seeds in rows and glue the leaves underneath. This will give your final dragonfly a much neater look and it also helps to hold the leaves in the correct position until the glue dries.


And there you go... two little corn dragonflies, once the eyes are fixed in place. We added cotton thread so they could be hung in the window. I originally thought that we would hang them from the trees in the garden so that birds could collect the seeds but the children wanted them hung inside for the time being anyway. We also made lavender butterflies in the same way as a pretty and natural way to infuse the house with the smell of lavender.


Here they are hanging with some of the butterflies, we have grouped them all together and tied them to a piece of stick so that it looks like a small mobile, but they look equally nice hanging on their own.  I am thinking of hanging some lavender butterflies in the bathroom window to add a relaxing aroma to the room.


We made the lavender butterflies in the same way except this time we have used lavender flower heads for the body and eucalyptus leaves for the wings. These are a beautiful purple and silver colour and smell fantastic.


This is the layout we used for the butterflies and stuck them together in the same way as before. The children really enjoy
nature crafting in this way and this has the added bonus of smelling wonderful too.



14 comments:

  1. These are great - am definitely making these, our birdfeeder also grows crops underneath!

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  2. thank-you for visiting, we have grown some quite strange things under the bird feeders :D

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  3. These are so sweet, especially liking the aromatic butterflies idea :)

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  4. thank-you, they smell quite strong when the sun hits them :)

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  5. simple and lovely. i have a thing for dragonfly's so i will def make these with claud, in the right season down-under of course! Thanks for sharing x

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  6. thank-you for reading and for your lovely comment :)

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  7. These are C-U-T-E!!!! I adore them :-)

    Thanks linking up to Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

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  8. thank-you for reading and your lovely comments :D

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  9. These are perfect!! We have some corn stalks left in our garden, I think we will make these! Adorable!!

    I hope you will stop by and add your dragonflies to my link party-Pinterest Tuesday. I am sure other mommas will want to Pin your idea!

    http://ourcountryroad.blogspot.com/2011/08/pinterest-tuesday-week-one.html

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  10. thank-you for reading and your lovely comments, I will pop by to see all the lovely craft ideas :D

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  11. I'm a co-host for the All Year Round Blog Carnival. We've featured you here: http://littlehomeschoolblessings.blogspot.com/2012/05/featured-on-all-year-round-summer.html

    You can get a button here: http://littlehomeschoolblessings.blogspot.com/p/this-summer-we-are-co-hosting-all-year.html

    Thanks so much for linking up!

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  12. These are adorable! I just wanted to let you know that I featured them on my Summer Carnival round up with ways to get more hands on with nature. Thanks for sharing! :) http://famigliaandseoul.blogspot.com/2012/06/all-year-round-summer-carnival-get.html

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  13. Thank-you both for featuring the corn dragonflies, I'll be sure to pop by and visit soon :)

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  14. They are lovely! Thank you so much for sharing with the All Year Round Summer Carnival. :) I've featured your post here: http://sunnydaytodaymama.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/all-year-round-week-twenty-one-7-summer.html

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