Corn Husk Sunflower Wreath

After harvesting our corn from the allotment the children have been trying to find craft uses for the left over husks, last week we made the corn husk dolls and this week we are making a sunflower wreath. We love sunflowers and due to bad weather and slugs we didn't manage to grow any this year, so the children have made one starting by painting the corn husks.

After they painted the husks yellow they were left to dry and we twisted some garden wire into a circle to form the basic outline for our sunflower shape.

The 'petals' were then bent around this wire and glued in place, we used hot glue as it is very quick and dries fast.

When bending aim to have the yellow side facing forward and glue on the back, this should keep the front looking nice, continue around the hoop as seen below.

We started with the larger petals first to get a complete circle all about the same size.

Once you have finished the first circle if you want to you can layer the flower to add more fullness, just continue going around building more layers until you are happy with the result or run out of petals.

Here's ours after the layering, as you can see it has a beautiful 3D effect. I have pinned it on the notice board so you can see how it hangs, I really love the wreath like this but the children decided it needed something else to make it more sunflower like. They have cut out a circle of brown felt and glued it to the back.

The children are really pleased with their sunflower wreath and I think it looks lovely. This could also be achieved with leaves if you don't have access to corn husks, as there are some beautiful coloured leaves about at the moment. We may try a red one when we collect enough leaves.

Autumn Leaf Bowls

Just time to fit in one last craft the children have been doing for Autumn before the season changes, this time we have made leaf shaped clay pots or candle holders. My eldest children made some like these when they were very small and I can remember some children making them when I was at school. So we thought we would have a go using a pack of air drying clay after seeing some recently which reminded me of how pretty the bowls looked.

First thing we did was print and cut out some leaf templates and chose one each, then we rolled out the clay to the required thickness. We rolled ours out quite thin but I think if we make some more I will leave the clay slightly thicker as I was terrified that the children would break them.

My husband put the leaf template onto the clay and cut round them all and we added a few leaf details onto the clay. For more realistic looking veins you could press real leaves into the clay and cut around them.

The cut out leaf was then placed onto a bowl, so that it curled around it and left to completely dry, we used several different sized bowls so that each leaf had a unique shape. There is a lot of waiting to dry in this craft so a little patience is required.

After the clay has dried it was possible to paint the bottom of the leaf while it was still on the bowl, we used acrylic paint for this. After the painted base has dried you can remove your leaf bowl and paint the inside, we started to paint them in Autumnal colours but the children decided to add extra colours to the inside of the bowls.

This is what we ended up with, after adding a little extra sparkle as it is coming up to Christmas. My daughter's one is mostly red, my son has added a little blue glitter and I painted mine red and lightly sprayed it with gold paint. They are not quite finished yet as we will be adding a couple of layers of varnish to make them a little stronger and easier to clean.

It looks very Autumnal with a candle in it, although we are now seeing the start of Winter. My son also made some casts of dinosaur footprints with the left over clay, just like the fossil ones.