A friend of mine sent me a picture of a project she did with her grandchildren of a fall leaves bowl and I thought it was so beautiful and a great thing to do with fall leaves that I decided to post it.

At first when she sent it I thought she had used real leaves and was wondering where she had picked up such gorgeous ones but, then she told me that they were fake and that she used Artificial Fall Leaves in a Variety of Autumn Colors

However, if you live near beautiful foliage no need to use fake.

She also used mod poge Mod Podge instead of the traditional paper mache.

You don’t have to worry about the leaves disintegrating as the mod poge will seal them.

I don’t have pictures of her process making them so I am showing you some pictures of how I did this with kids in our day camp using the regular paper mache method.

We also made bowls, but used strips of newspaper instead.

The trick is to first blow up a round balloon.

Fill a bowl with the paper mache mixture of your choice. I used Purex Sta-Flo Liquid Starch

Cut up strips of newspaper (or use the leaves) and dip them in your solution.

Start laying them across the bottom part of your balloon.

Make sure you have a nice layer of newspaper, or leaves across the whole bottom. If you double the layer, it will be stronger.

When you are all done (make sure you cover up your tables if you don’t want to have a mess like I did) then the bowls need to dry for a while. I found large containers to put the bottom of the bowl on.

When they are all dry, you bust the balloon and the bowl you paper mached or mod poged stays intact.

If you used paper you will need to paint or color it but, if you just used the leaves, then no need to do anything to finish it off

Enjoy!