Busy Hands: Autumn Print Leaf Mobile

Autumn is creeping in here in Dubai, but we hardly get to see the beautiful fall colours associated with the season. I love the way autumn leaves look, and wanted to recreate them in some form. So, we decide to make our own!

This leaf mobile is made with painted leaf cut-outs and real twigs. It looks great, and really gives our home an autumn feeling!

For the leaf cut-outs I used this free hand-drawn autumn leaf template on the Bugs and Fishes blog. You can use this one, or draw your own.

Materials needed to make the Autumn Print Leaf Mobile:

- Autumn leaf print-out or hand-drawn sheet

- Paints in red, orange, and yellow (or use this home made paint recipe)

- Paint sponges or regular, clean dishwashing sponges

- Two twigs/branches, about the same length

- String

- Ribbon

- Coloured paper in orange and yellow

- Glue

- Cellotape

Here's how you can make it:

1. Let your child paint the leaf outline sheet with sponge in red, orange, and yellow. This is the fun part, which will create some unique designs! I chose sponge painting for this craft because it creates a textured look, and is easy to do.

It was certainly fun for Little Dude, and you can see more of his sponge artwork in the background!

2. Let the paint dry, and then roughly cut out the leaf shapes and glue them on to the orange and yellow coloured paper. I did this to strengthen the leaf cut-outs, and make them look more colourful when they turn in the breeze.

3. Cut out the leaves once the glue is dry.

4. Glue or tape on strings to the leaves. I used eight leaves for this mobile. Two were large, four were medium, and two were small. Try to create some sort of pattern or symmetry to make it look good.

5. Join the two twigs with ribbon at the centre.

6. Tie each leaf to the twigs where you want them.

7. Tie another long ribbon to the centre and hang the leaf mobile up.

We put our leaf mobile indoors and Little Dude loves seeing it sway in the breeze!

I had to do most of the work on this craft, so older kids might enjoy making the mobile themselves. The painted leaves make it look special, so it would make a great autumn gift too.

Busy Hands is a series about activities and craft you can do with toddlers and young children.


This post has been linked to:
Let Kids Be Kids // Tuesday Tutorials