Shining Dawn Books

Gail Bartel from That Artist Woman has graciously allowed us to post one of her recent articles here at Shining Dawn Books.  When we first read her post, we couldn’t get past how beautiful her Salt Dough Leaf Prints are!  And knowing that so many of you are studying trees this time of year made the craft even more perfect for featuring!  Thank you, Gail!

Gail Bartel is an artist living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  A mom of three, Gail became involved with the local elementary school seven years ago to assist with some art and crafts projects.  She is now the “artist in residence” at the school providing art education to students from Kindergarten to Grade 6.  She is also the author of the blog “that artist woman” which features step-by-step tutorials for many of the art projects she teaches at school.  In her personal work, she is a developing watercolorist focusing on the beauty of the Canadian Rockies.

Materials Required:

salt dough, recipe to follow
artificial silk leaves
round container to use as cutter
oven
acrylic paint
mod podge for sealer



Salt Dough Recipe

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 1/2 – 2 cups water
extra flour for kneading

Mix first 3 ingredients together to form a nice soft dough. Knead smooth with extra flour. The more you knead this dough the easier it is to work with.

Keep leftover dough in the fridge.

Make up your salt dough. This recipe will make enough for 8 rounds.

Roll out dough and the using circular container or bowl, (coffee can) cut your rounds.

Pick a leaf for your design. I initially tried this with fresh leaves but they did not leave a good imprint. I think it would have worked with clay.

The silk leaves leave a better impression in the salt dough.

Place where you want it and press the leaf into the dough.

When you lift it off you should have a nice impression.

Place on a parchment or foil covered cookie sheet and bake at 250 degrees for about 2 – 3 hours or until hard.

Let cool.

Take some acrylic paint in Autumn colors.

After trial and error I found the best way to paint these is to paint the leaves in different colors first. Let dry.

Then using dark brown paint that you have watered down apply a wash, like an antiquing glaze to the entire surface. The dark color picks up the veining in the leaf and still lets the Autumn color show thru.

Let dry and then apply a coat of glossy Mod Podge as a sealer.

That’s it. A good project for all ages.

We realize Gail has used artificial leaves for this project rather than real leaves.  If you prefer, try real leaves first to see if they leave a good enough impression for you.  If not, use artificial leaves and use it as an opportunity to talk about leaf parts and how fragile they are.

Also, Melissa completed a similar project with her children last year called Nature Prints in Clay that you won’t want to miss either!

Don’t forget – the new and improved Delightful Deciduous Trees NaturExplorers unit was released a few weeks ago!

Tags: art, autumn, craft, fall, leaves, nature study, trees

This entry was posted by Cindy on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Delightful Deciduous Trees Activities, Guest Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.