Happy first day of Autumn! I love to use children’s art for the seasonal decorations in our home. We needed something to spruce up our windows, so we decided to turn some broken crayons into a wonderful fall keepsake…Handprint Trees!
Begin by tracing your child’s hand and arm on brown paper. Cut it out, and set it aside. Next, give each child a piece of waxed paper and a few crayons in fall colors (with the paper peeled off). Give your chid an old pencil sharpener, and have them make a few crayon shavings onto half of the wax paper.
(We used a fine grater for this step, and I’m still trying to figure out how to clean the wax off! So, ignore the picture and skip the grater!) Another option is to have another grown up make a bunch of shavings for the children to sprinkle on to make their creation. Thanks Jen!
Next, fold the wax paper over and place a sheet of copy paper or an old T-shirt over the top. (I tried it with a towel and it was too thick to work well.) Use an iron on medium heat, to go over the top. This is the most fun part, so make sure the children are gathered around! The finished result will be something like this…
The colors sometimes bleed through the wax paper, which is why you want a thin layer of paper or fabric to protect your iron.
Cut the wax paper into a cloud shape to resemble the leaves of the tree, then glue on the handprint trunk. Simple, and beautiful in a window. 😉
Looking for some more fall art? Check out our Pumpkin Watercolor Painting.
This project was originally posted on our old homeschool blog on November 19, 2011.