Autumn Quick Green Crafts

 

Out walking at the moment, I am often literally stopped in my tracks by the lavish beauty of the season.

The combination of exquisite leaf shapes and crackling colours sends me creative.  My head floods with ideas and I’m in danger of being overwhelmed and undertaking nothing. 

This year I salvaged two quick craft projects from the Autumn parade.  One is to take the prettiest small leaves and press them in old encyclopaedias, as my mother taught me.  In two weeks, they will be ready to glue onto seasonal birthday cards.

The other is to dry hydrangea heads.  Hydrangeas spend the summers putting out innocent candy-coloured flowers, but they take on a more subtle blushing and tinting in autumn.  I have hung them upside down in my larder and when they are dry, they will fill vacant vases round the house.  Dried hydrangeas always remind me of my art teacher who would keep them in her draped and jumbled art room, ready for us to paint a still life.

Whether it is the slight melancholy of the falling season, but carrying out these small acts makes me feel a connection with days and people from my past, a sensation which even as it saddens, comforts.

Autumn acer leaf cards

 

Autumn acer leaf cards

The Goldfinger Incident

I’m a bit of a fidget.  If I’m talking on the phone I like to use a headset and find a task to keep my hands busy.

It was time to ring John, an elderly friend from church.  So I decided to make some Christmas decorations out of materials I already had, the remnants of previous projects.

“Hello, John.  How has your week been?”

Since John is confined to his house and my adventures have been curtailed by Lockdown, it is hard to make the conversation sparkle.

“It’s been mild for the time of year, hasn’t it?”

I laid out some cones gathered from a giant redwood and drilled holes in them.

“The Autumn colours have been lovely, but the leaves are falling now.”

So far, so good.  I was having a nice catch-up with John and being creative at the same time.  I felt positively smug.

Looking at the decorations however, they seemed very…brown.

A little gold paint would make it SO much better.

I found a half-used spray can. Unfortunately the gold paint had formed a crust which meant I couldn’t depress the nozzle. 

I pressed down harder.

Suddenly, there was a crunch and the nozzle was now stuck down, in spray mode.  Gold paint was bubbling everywhere and pooling on the worktop. 

I gave up trying to have a civilised conversation.

“Oh no.  This is the only gold paint I’ve got!  I have to use it.  So I’m putting my hands in it and rubbing it over the pine cones…It’s going everywhere.  I look as if I’ve been in a punch-up with Tinkerbell – and lost!”

Judging by the chuckles from the other end of the phone, I think John enjoyed my combination of craftwork and phone call rather more than our usual sedate chat.

And the paint did stop coming out eventually.