Our Little House in the Country

Clay Autumn Leaves – a great, simple Fall craft for all ages.  It’s amazing what you can make with a little clay, glue and glitter!

Disclosure: I received the clay used in this activity from ArtMaterialsCo.com as a free sample in return for a fair and honest review.  All thoughts are my own.

I often get my inspiration for our craft and art activities from the materials themselves and when this pack of clay arrived in the post the beautiful rich colour of it immediately made me think of all the lovely autumn activities we had been doing over the past few weeks.  We have spent a lot of time having fun with fall art activities such as our sunflower crafts and our autumn trees so I wondered if we could possibly make leaves with the clay.

What we used:

• Plus Clay from ArtMaterialsCo.com
• A variety of leaves
• Rolling pin
• Clay cutting tools
• PVA non-toxic glue
• Orange ribbon
• Red and gold glitter
• Drinking straws

What we did:

• Firstly, we collected lots of leaves from our garden, particularly leaves with a very obvious vein structure along the back.
• We spent a few moments softening the clay by rolling it and squishing it – a great sensory and fine motor activity – strengthening little hands.
• Using the rolling pins we rolled out thin pieces of clay
• We placed a leaf onto the clay, underside down and rolled over the leave firmly using the rolling pin.
• Peeling back the leave you should find a perfect print of the leaf in the clay.
• Using our plastic clay/playdough cutting tools we carefully trimmed the excess clay from around the leaf print.
• we wanted to use our leaves as hanging decorations so using a straw we punched a small hole a one end of each clay leaf.
• The clay we used was air drying clay so we left it aside over night to dry.
• When dry we painted the printed side with PVA glue which makes a super “glaze for this type of clay and left to dry.
• We then covered the other side in PVA and sprinkled glitter all over this side.
• When fully dry we threaded ribbon through each hole and secured.
• The final step was to display them on a “tree” – a branch we have spray painted white and use throughout the year to celebrate different seasons and festivals.

The clay (review):

The Product: Plus Modelling Clay – a clean handling, air drying modelling clay suitable for ages 3 and over (although our little lady (2.5yo) used it without difficulty under supervision.

Our thoughts:  In general I am not a huge clay fan which is ridiculous as I have been teaching art for 15 years and clay is a major part of the curriculum here plus I love to use playdough and other modelling materials.  Typically, I do not like the feel of terracota clay and especially the synthetic clays used by most schools.  However, I really enjoyed using this clay.  It has a lovely texture and is indeed “clean handling” as described on the pack.  It is easy to manipulate and doesn’t dry too quickly so doesnt become flakey and bitty with alot of handling by kids at play!  We found it very easy and pleasant to use and absolutely perfect for our project.  While the kids were making their leaves I made a quick little pot and a few other little items before rolling them into a ball to use in our project and it worked perfectly well for these little projects too.  It dried really well overnight, our leaves were quite thin so that probably helped but it most definitely an effective air drying clay.  I was worried that when I added the PVA to it as a glaze that it may soften it, but no, it didn’t and took the “glaze” really well.  We were delighted with our end product.  Would we reccommend this clay – yes!  Would we use it again – absolutely.

Supplier:  For all your arts and crafts supplies, with a great junior section, check out The Art Materials Company website. You can also contact them via twitter – @ArtMaterialsCom , on Facebook  and by email  – info@artmaterialsco.com

Have fun!

Ciara x

Disclosure: I received the clay used in this activity from ArtMaterialsCo.com as a free sample in return for a fair and honest review.  All thoughts are my own.