Wacky Wednesday #30: Fall Leaves

This costume was made by hand--in the dark.

(Well, that got your attention, I’d bet.) It’s a sliiiiight exaggeration, I admit. I had both sunlight and electricity to aid me in this project. The darkness I mentioned is my self-pitying reference to the fact that we’ve returned to Standard Time. It’s November and someone, somewhere, made us turn our clocks back. It’s dark earlier these days and I’m not happy about it.

It’s officially fall now, and I thought I’d make a costume that reflects that. What’s that you say? It’s been fall for six weeks, officially? Hmmmm. It’s been in the high 80s here in San Diego. It doesn’t really feel like fall yet, except for the annoying darkness that settles in far too early now.

Of course, I have noticed leaves changing lately. Just a little. And that means a fall leaves blog post.

I decided to make my fall leaves by painting fabric and paper. The paper leaves were especially fun to make. If you want to make some of your own, here are some tips:

1)      Do not chant rude things to yourself, along the lines of “This leaf is lame. I can’t paint a leaf!”

2)      Your leaf can be big, small, realistic, cartoony—whatever. There’s no right or wrong.

3)      If possible, use thicker paper as it will hold its shape and won’t bend and buckle when painted.

4)      Try painting the leaf asymmetrically. It’s only my opinion but the ones that are not perfectly symmetrical are prettier, and more natural-looking. Leaves don’t change according to a diagram, so if one side is red and the other yellow or orange, that is how nature does it. This actually takes pressure off of you and me, since making something perfectly symmetrical can be stressful. We’re trying to de-stress with our leaf project, not re-stress. The photo below shows leaves I drew using permanent marker. I layered paint so that the effect would be mottled and have lots of color and visual texture. If in doubt, keep layering paint!

This week’s creation is not as much a costume as it is accessories. But it has a fallish feel and was fun to wear. I’m still really tired from Halloween so I scaled back a little on my creation this week. I hot glued my fabric and paper leaves to one another to form a necklace. It has a bit of a Hawaiian feel, I think.

When I started typing this post a few days ago, it was still hot and my brain was not in fall mode yet.

Fast forward two days and I can report to you that the atmosphere must have known I was going to write about fall, because yesterday we got some rain—yes, rain in San Diego!—and I needed a sweatshirt this morning. Someone flipped a switch somewhere and suddenly it is fall.

Supposedly we’re going to get an El Nino rainy winter this year. So tune in next month when our topic will be Build Your Own Ark-in three easy steps!

  

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