The Harvest Craft Book
By Thomas Berger, 1992.
Originally published in Dutch.
"For many years now our family has collected chestnuts, acorns, beech-nuts, autumn leaves and so on, from which we have made all sorts of things. In this way gradually one acquires a better eye for the beauty of nature."
----From the Foreword
Autumn is a time of beauty and abundance. Sure there's the requisite colorful leaves and jolly orange pumpkins, but there arealso all manner of nuts, cones, grasses and grains, rose-hips, corn husks, seeds and teasels.
It is a scavenger's paradise and a crafter's mega-mart. On every autumnal stroll, my youngest daughter fills my pockets with acorns and hickories, wild apples, milkweed pods,and a dozen other fall-en treasures that catch her eye.
The Harvest Craft Book has absolutely beautiful color photographs, as well as line drawings to illustrate the different steps and techniques.
Chapter 1, Decorating and Harvest has simple instructions for gathering, drying flowers, mounting materials, making posies, and a wreath.
Chapters 2,3 and 4 all cover working with straw, from basic techniques to beginner projects such as a bouquet of cereal grasses, simple ornaments, and classic straw hearts. It then moves on to more elaborate ornaments, wreaths, straw spirals, and even straw goats, horses, rooster, and people. With no previous experience, I made the goat, and he was easier than he looked. The older kids made goats and horses that also turned out pretty good.
Chapter 5, Corn Husk Dolls, teaches how to make traditional corn husk dolls. We made these, and they are fairly easy and turned out quite handsomely. A smaller child could make a simple figure, an older child could make one with a more stylish outfit or corn silk hair.
Chapter 6, Harvest Materials from Woods and Fields, shows how to make various people and animals, and even an owl and a bee, from assorted nuts and cones, as well as a teasel spider and hedgehog. This is pretty easy and rewarding for young children. Intriguing shapes of deadwood, roots, and driftwood magically transform into tree spirits and trolls Leaves, corn, berries and seeds are strung into handsome decorative garlands and mobiles. Autumn crafts are a nice way to enjoy the fruits of fall, and bring some welcome color and nature into the house before the snowy monochrome of winter.
Chapter 7, Harvest Leaves. This chapter shows how to make leaf crafts that are useful as well as beautiful. Tips are first given for working with leaves, as well as drying and pressing them. Instructions are even given for making your own leaf and flower press.
Once you have some nice dry, flat leaves, leaf crafts are a cinch. These leaf projects are especially
rewarding for younger children because they are quick, easy, and visually rewarding. There's a beautiful frame of exquisitely colored leaves glued on a cardboard base. Mr. Berger suggests using it as a window decoration, but we used ours as a picture frame for autumnal kid art. There are leaf transparencies which are beginner-easy but look great. There are postcards and note cards decorated with leaves. this is a great way to get little Billy and Susie to send hose overdue thank-you notes. There's a leaf crown, just like the one September wears in Christopher's Harvest Time (see previous review). We made a number of these with maple leaves, and it's easy if you're gentle, and it look great! Prepare for photo-op! Especially nice if you have a kid who likes to dress up as a fairy or elf.
Chapter 8, Autumn, Michaelmas, and Hallowe'en has crafts for each of these holidays. Michaelmas has a beautiful leaf-collage of St. Michael fighting the dragon, decorating candles for the dark winter days ahead, and making a dragon candle stick of clay. Hallowe'en brings us cobwebs of a chestnut, string and toothpicks. Our family made these and they were fairly easy and really looked like cobwebs. The dragon made of prickly chestnuts turned out impressively, but was quite delicate. Other crafts include a sling, a kite, a fancy dragon loaf of bread, and colorful tissue transparencies. Transparencies are easy to make and add beautiful color to combat the coming winter blahs.
Chapter 9 details Tools and Materials. Most of the stuff is pretty easy to get (or pick up off the ground for free). The only thing I found hard to get was nice straw, especially with the seed heads still attached. However,to make your autumn crafting easy. I've included sources for materials below.
Straw: blackbeards-wheat.cc carries a variety of cereal grain straw, with the seed heads.
polart.com carries clean, evenly-cut straw
achildsdream.com has plain and colored evenly-cut straw
save-on-crafts.com carries wheat straw with seed heads, wheat straw wreath bases and
bouquets, and cotton branches with raw cotton bolls.
Stockmar candle decorating wax may be obtained from magiccabin.com or on amazon. It's a tad expensive, but even a young child can decorate lovely, colorful candles with it for holidays or gifts.
Enjoy your crafting, and feel free to comment below.
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