What to do with all these leaves?

Fall is here and leaves are everywhere. The variety of shapes and colors is amazing. There’s an inspiring children’s book called Look What I Did with a Leaf by Morteza Sohi. The book describes how to make pictures with a variety of leaves. 

I used old books to flatten my leaves and mounted them on card stock. Below are photos of my leaf artwork.

A leaf project could be used to teach art as well as leaf identification.  I found working with leaves very relaxing. 

The cow is one of my favorites.  The head is made from a Tulip Poplar leaf. (I optimized the photo for quicker web page loading, and lost some color depth in the image.)

The narrow leaves on the butterfly are from a Willow Oak. The dark dots were punched from a leaf.

This aquarium scene has an oak leaf representing seaweed in the bottom right. Remember that White Oaks have rounded lobes and Red Oaks are pointed.

This parrot is perched on a branch made with fern leaves.

The body of the owl is a Birch leaf.

A Ginkgo leaf makes a nice tail on this fish. I laminated the scene on a small piece of card stock and hung it as part of a mobile.

NC State Fair Entry

The theme of the 2013 graphic contest is "A Healthy Forest is a Happy Forest." Below is my entry.