Red Leaf Suncatcher

September flew by - the return to school, the beginning of soccer season and gymnastics classes, and weekends full of birthday parties and family gatherings meant that we barely had time to be home. You may have noticed that we were pretty quiet on the blog during the month of September. Although we did have a little time to play, create, and learn our focus mostly pulled us in other directions.

So this week, when things finally calmed down, we were excited to wind up with an extra home day. Some beautiful weather and the arrival of the foliage season pulled us outside. 

While we were outside we found ourselves collecting tiny, red maple leaves off the ground. They were the perfect size for a paper plate suncatcher project. 

We used a similar design to our Dandelion Suncatcher - where we also used paper plates, contact paper, and natural materials. 

Materials: 

• 2 Paper Plates with a circle cut out of the middle of each one (it's easiest to use cheap, thin plates and cut both at the same time)

• Contact Paper (2 square pieces just slightly larger than the plates) 

• Red Leaves (or any other colored leaves)

• Red Glitter

• White Glue 

• Scissors

To begin with, I traced a circle onto one of the contact paper squares. (I used a kitchen bowl and a sharpie.) These circles are slightly smaller than the holes in the paper plates. 

I peeled off the non-sticky paper and laid the paper sticky side up for Little Brother to begin using. He used the leaves we had collected outside and pressed them into the center of the circle. He kept the leaves inside the circle so we wouldn't have to cut any of them. 

After he had finished adding all the leaves he wanted, we added a little bit of red glitter onto the paper. 

I peeled the paper off the second piece of contact paper and placed it sticky side down on top of the piece we had just decorated. I then carefully cut the circle out of the paper. 

I took one of the plates and added white glue around the edge. I carefully placed the contact paper piece onto the glued edge of the plate. I then added more glue on top of the contact paper and put the plate on top. The groves of the two plates lined up, which meant the plates really had a chance to seal together. After it had set for a few minutes I punched a hole in the top and used ribbon to create a hanger. 

We love how the suncatcher let us bring some of the fall color inside! It would be fun to try this with other colors too - like all yellow, gold, or green. We've only got another week or so to try another color - but if time slows down again you can be sure we'd like to try it. 

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