Fall Greeting Cards

Fall is officially here and the weather is just now starting to catch up, I decided it was time to take the girls leaf collecting. We live near the mountains in North Carolina and have a huge variety of trees around us meaning plenty of leaves to gather! 

After we had as many leaves as our hands could hold we brought them in so we could talk about them. Here are a few facts about leaves that we found interesting:
 
  • Leaves make food for plants using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide
  • The process of making food is called photosynthesis
  • Leaves are green because of chlorophyll
  • Leaves have veins that carry water and nutrients
  • Carotenoids produce the yellow-orange color you see during autumn
  • Carotenoids are present during summer but an abundance of green chlorophyll masks the yellow-orange
  • Anthoncyanins produce the red-purple color seen during autumn
  • Don’t forget to discuss how all leaves are different sizes and shapes, did you know pine needles are leaves!?

We wanted to be able to share our leaves with everyone we know so we made greeting cards with them. We used three simple techniques to create our cards; Sharpies and watercolor resist, crayon rubbing and watercolor resist, and foil rubbing and Sharpies.

Fall Greeting Cards
 

Here’s what you’ll need to make our cards:

  • Blank note cards (or paper thick enough for watercolors)
  • Permanent markers
  • Watercolors
  • Crayons
  • Aluminum foil
  • Scissors
  • Glue

First we traced our leaves with Sharpies, then drew the veins in the outline, we painted the inside of our leaves with watercolors.

 

For crayon rubbing, we placed a leaf (bottom side up) under our note card and rubbed the top of the note card with the side of a crayon, then we painted them with watercolors.

 

The foil rubbing technique was a favorite. Placing our leaves under a piece of aluminum foil and rubbing it with our fingers revealed the leaf’s shape, we used Sharpies to color the shape. Wait for the ink to be dry, cut the leaf shape out and glue it to the note card. 

 

 

Now we can send autumnal greetings with our leaf themed cards to family and friends! For some added fun write a leaf fact on the inside of a card or even add a quote or poem about fall!

About Aleacia

Aleacia is a stay at home mom to two amazing little girls. You can find them getting messy and having fun with art at Dilly-Dali Art. She loves cooking, taking pictures, gardening, hiking the mountains of North Carolina, and drinking coffee, all of which you can read about at I’m Bloggin’ where she also posts about homeschooling her children.

Comments

  1. What a lovely cards. I really love the foil technique and it looks a lot easier than those rubbing foil sheets you get in the art store. I am a big fan of making things easier.

  2. These cards are gorgeous!! Love doing art with leaves, need to try the foil rubbing ones:) Thanks for sharing

    • Thank you for the comment, Roopa! I think the foil ones are my favorite and they are on my “to try” list as well.

  3. These are SO beautiful! I just shared them on my face book wall with my fans!
    Happy Fall Crafting!

  4. I love these! Pinning it now!

  5. Love the foil leaf!

  6. I AdoRE these Aleacia! (as always!) I really want to get my girls to try the foil rubbings. Oh who am I kidding? I want to try MYSELF!! Love them, thanks!