- A piece of blue mountboard ( about A4 size)
- Some cheap wax crayons
- Some brown paper
- Distressing ink
- Paper leaves
- conkers ( horse chestnut seeds)
Also need glue gun and a hairdryer.
First cut a tree shape from the brown paper. This is actually textured but you can't see that very well. Stick firmly to the mountboard and trim off the excess at the bottom if necessary.
Next I selected all the greens, browns and yellows from my packet of wax crayons and after removing the paper sleeves hot glued them to the bottom of the paper.
The next stage which I forgot to photograph ( it was a bit stressful!) was to turn the paper upside down so that the wax crayons were hanging down. Using the hairdryer I melted the wax so it all ran together and down the paper. The crayons melted very suddenly and became much more funny than I expected so the effect was not what I had pictured in my mind but no matter.
The leaves are die cut form brown paper by a kind friend who has one of those clever machines. If you don't have paper leaves there is no reason why you couldn't use real ones.
I sponged then first with diluted distressing ink ( strong black coffee would also work fine) and then marked in the veins with undiluted in. The wetness of the ink causes them to curl up a bit which gave a very pleasing effect.
Finally I stuck on the leaves and the conkers randomly with more hot glue and left to dry.
As a first attempt I am quite pleased with it - it wasn't what I was setting out to do, mainly because the wax melted much faster than I'd anticipated and was blown about by the hairdryer.
Next time I'd use a lower heat setting and make sure the blower was set to a minimum as the liquid wax was blown sideways rather than just running straight as I'd expected.
