Mini Autumn Wreaths

The project I'm sharing with you today came about because of another project, and it has become one of my favorites!

I bought some bleeding tissue paper and cut it into small squares. The kids drew tree trunks, arranged the tissue squares on top and sprayed them with water.

When it dried, we peeled off the tissue paper. The project didn't turn out as I had hoped.

Kind of blah. I heard it works better with watercolor paper (we used construction paper) so maybe that was the problem. But I happened to glance over at the pile of tissue paper we peeled off.

I loved the muted colors! And when I scrunched them up, they reminded me of fall leaves.

Beautiful, right? Some of them were very cool.

Anyway, I knew we had to use these for a project instead of just throwing them away. So I got out some small paper plates and had the kids paint the rim.

You could cut the middle out before painting, but this gave the kids a place to hold onto their plate while they painted.

When the paint was dry, I cut out the middles. Then the kids dipped the tissue paper into glue and stuck it on their wreath.

To make it even more fun, we also added some candy corn!

I added the little tag for the name, and our autumn wreaths were done.

Or so I thought. Even though I let them dry for two days, when I hung them on our door some of the candy corn fell off. And some kind of "melted" down the wreath. I was worried that I would come in the next day and all the candy would be on the floor and I'd have sticky trails of syrup all over the door. So I peeled off the ones that were starting to slide and replaced them with tissue paper. I don't know if it was the Elmer's glue that caused it, or if the kids just used too much glue. (Mine were still intact and so were a couple others.) So if you decide to make these, either skip the candy corn or use different glue. Hot glue might work better. I still like how they turned out and they add the perfect touch of Fall to my room!