Our fall crafting streak continues and I wanted to pop in quickly (I am in the midst of editing tons of photos from a beautiful wedding I had the honor of shooting about a week and a half ago) and share!
Stamps are one of the kids favorite, easy, “projects” to pull out and do. I was inspired by this blog post as well as by the section she contributed to in Amanda’s book (which is featured in her post) and starting thinking about what bits of nature the kids and I might be able to find around our own back yard that would make nice stamps. Unfortunately, we don’t have any beautiful Black Walnut or Asian Poppy trees around here that would supply us with unique nuts and pods for stamping with, but we took a good look at what we did have and ended up finding something that turned out to be easy, fun and beautiful.
Okra!
Our summer okra plants are starting to slow down a bit, but the okra is starting to become tough and fibrous more quickly and honestly, we are just tired of eating okra by September. We harvested a handful of them, brought them in, cut them and found a beautiful nature stamp.
It was so fun to watch the kids fill their pages with the colorful prints. They look very similar to flowers.
They were so much fun, even I couldn’t resist stamping it up too. I would love do this type of stamping again on some undyed linen or muslin squares and make some fall bunting with them.
Since we didn’t really find anything else out back that would make a good nature stamp, we looked inside. Since we have been learning about apples over the past few weeks and we had a perfect few in the fruit bowl, I thought the classic Kindergarten apple printing project would be fun to do too.
I loved revealing the star shaped core of an apple when you cut it straight through the center. I felt a bit like a magician given the reaction of my four year old.
For the apple prints, we used poster paint instead of stamp pads.
Again, so fun I couldn’t help but join.
All and all our nature prints were a success. Miss Amelia was napping through most of it, but when she woke up she jumped in and had her chance to stamp.
And she also discovered that not only does okra make a great stamp, it also makes a great snack.
Not sure I agree with her on that sentiment (I prefer mine cooked), but hey, whatever floats your boat baby!
This was a great project for not only getting out and enjoying the nicer weather (while you are searching for nature bits to stamp with), but you could print all sorts of fun things to hang, display, use or wear.
If anyone does their own nature stamps, I’d love to hear how they turned out!
by mamabrit
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