Fall Leaves

I'm starting to see articles about the Fall harvest in magazines, but it's still 90 degrees here in Florida and we're heading for a beach vacation today. Yet somehow, I feel that I'm ready for the Fall. Now, realize that the leaves don't change here, the temperature doesn't really get cooler until the rare December day, and our vegetables are harvested in the Spring. (Right now we're getting mangoes. Yum!) But the kids are getting ready to go back to school, and I'm starting to look forward to the green markets that are open from October to May here. I'm already planning a brunch with friends following a green market visit. I'll pick up freshly made cider donuts, croissants, melons, and we'll bring them home to serve with a big batch of eggs. How fun. But no, we won't have beautiful Autumn leaves to decorate our table.

But I was in the mood for them anyway, so I did the next best thing -- I whipped up a bunch of watercolor leaves. I used watercolor paper and cut it into leaf shapes, then I colored them with orange, green and purple paints. This took a couple coats to get the shades I wanted. I also used a stylus to draw lines into the leaves.


I just finished making some silver links to give to friends, and thought these leaves would be a perfect tag to attach them to. The links were made using 4" of wire wrapped around a highlighter pen. That seemed about the right diameter. Then I wrapped the wire "tails" around the ring, and they were done.

I punched a hole at the top of the leaves and attached a couple pieces of yarn and some ribbon. Here are the finished leaves with the silver links attached.