Autumn

I love autumn. The slowly changing colours on the trees and the sudden bite in the air. Finding ourselves indoors more and the way the children turn to their long abandoned knitting. And the apples, picking them, cooking them, eating them and this year crafting with them! Thanks to Jean over at the Artful Parent we spent a great afternoon printing with apples.

We began with Jean's bunting project. I used some Kraft paper and old brown paper bags we had in the art cupboard and some scrap paper from the printer as I liked the idea of the apple print being over text, as well as some plain white paper. We used windfall apples from the tree in our garden which are unfortunately not very tasty but perfect for printing. 

All three children joined in (8, 5 and 2) and really enjoyed themselves. I cut out the triangles and provided red ink and red water colour paint (from a tube) as that's what we had in the cupboard and then let them get stuck in. 

When they'd printed on every single triangle I'd cut out (and there were a lot) Noah still wanted to do more. So we decided to have a go at apple printing on fabric. I grabbed some thick white upholstery cotton I happen to have a lot of (in a previous life it was the tablecloths at our wedding supper) and some red fabric paint and the fun continued. The sisters were back now we were moving on to fabric so I cut each child 2 oblong pieces of fabric, in the back of my mind were visions of apple totes.

I've long been a fan of Jean's blog which is full of really fun craft activities for children and parents - I had an absolute blast with the apple printing too!