Fun Fall Project Tutorial: Marbled Leaves!

Okay, so a few days ago I had put Toby down for bed, and we had one hour of "Sammy time" before he too went to bed.  I proposed two options:

1) Watch his new Thomas movie (just got at a garage sale for $2) and eat the new "magic" blue popcorn (I got for free with coupons)

or

2) Do a craft project with Mommy.

To my surprise (and delight), he chose option #2!  So, I dove into my Pinterest list of things to make with the boys, and decided to try making these cool marbled fall leaves!

Here's how we did it...

First I found a scrap of white poster board in my office, and just used scissor to cut some random leaf shapes.  (If you don't want to freehand it, you could use real leaves as templates, or pull some leave illustrations off the web too)

Next I covered a plastic food container lid with shaving cream.  I used a knife to spread it like frosting so it would cover the whole lid.  I found I didn't really need this much, but it worked...

Next we took some of my acrylic paints and squirted them around the shaving cream.  I used a little bit of gold paint which added some nice sparkle...

 

 (Sammy is smiling big because the paint container farted! Aah, little boys...)

Now we took a wooden skewer and swirled the paint around in the shaving cream.  Fun for kids!!

 

Then, lay your leaf on the paint and gently press it down:

 

 Then carefully lift it up.  It looks pretty thick and goopy and you might think, hey, this doesn't look like the picture!!

 

Take a flat edge of a knife and scrape off the shaving cream:

 

 Voila!!

 

These turned out pretty cool I think for our first try!  These would be extra cool if done on both sides, sprinkled with a little glitter, then sprayed with some clear coat and strung together into a garland!