First Friday Art Class November 2014 - Fall Leaves

We took a little bit longer break than usual this year and are just now starting up our First Friday classes (this month on the second Friday). But we are back in session and ready to go.

Our theme today was FALL LEAVES. All of our projects had to do with leaves and trees and Fall.

I always like to start out with the simplest project and then move onto the more complicated. These Cut Out Leaves are very simple and fun to make. It's like cutting out snowflakes, only much simpler because you only have one fold. I first saw them HERE on the Choi to the World blog and I knew it would be a perfect first project for our November class.

I had so much fun making samples for class, I ended up with quite a few leaves! I found that regular printer paper, scrapbook paper and book pages work very well and cardstock is just too thick. We talked about design and the elegance that can be found in simplicity and delicacy.

The girls got right down to business and each made several leaves. We had 7 girls today and there were moments where they were all concentrating so much, there were actual moments of silence. Crazy! :)

Our next project was Puzzle Trees. (Inspiration for this project came from HERE and HERE). This is where we get a little more complicated. This project has a huge wow factor as you're doing it and the finished product. Win-win!

Here are the step by step instructions and my sample is at the top of this post:

For this project we worked together while the girls got the hang of it. It takes a minute for your brain to "get" that the negative space you create with your cuts become the positive space of the tree trunk and branches. This led to a nice discussion about positive and negative space. It was really fun to watch the girls begin to place their pieces on the black background and have the tree emerge. There were lots of 'ahh's' and 'cool's'.

Here are the sweet, beautiful girls with their finished, beautiful trees:

I did have another project on deck but we didn't get to it. We were going to do some paper piecing and do these Fall Branches. I've put the instructions HERE.

Next month I'm sure our theme will be Christmas or snowmen or angels or all of the above. See you in December!!