Good afternoon. Today I can finally summarize a large collection of ideas for crafts made from natural materials. We already have a large-format article with crafts made from autumn leaves for children and adults. There is a detailed article on autumn topics. In this article I will publish the most interesting and non-standard techniques and techniques. I decided to do wide overview page, which will prove and show that natural material for creativity is not only acorns and chestnuts. You will see with your own eyes and fall in love with all your soul with new fresh ideas for working with natural materials. Crafts made with your own hands, from branches, from leaves, from dried flowers, from everything that is under your feet. Nature is rich in material, and man is rich in beautiful ideas. So, let's see what crafts you can make from natural materials this season.
Package of ideas No. 1
SCALES from cones.
Cones are made up of scales. If you collect open pine cones, it is convenient to pull them out with pincers, pliers, or bite the SCALES with wire cutters. And then use this cone-like natural material as a mosaic covering for a variety of autumn crafts.
Note. So that the cones open well, their scales spread out, they can be heated in the oven.
Here we see mushrooms. Their legs are carved from thick wooden blocks. The hats are made of plasticine and the top of the hats is covered with scales. You get some cute DIY mushrooms. Suitable work for school activities.
But FIR cones have scales flatter and smoother. They look like smoothed feathers of birds. That’s why the idea for a craft comes to mind on a bird theme. We sculpt the body of the bird from plasticine, coat it with PVA glue, put a layer of torn paper napkins on the glue, again with glue, again with napkins - it turns out papier mache shell. We dry this shell until it is completely lignified. And on this hard, dry surface, with hot glue (layer by layer, row by row), we lay a spruce “tile” of feather-scales.
And also The scales of a fir cone are similar to the scaly armor of ancient lizards. So here's another idea for you. After all, this is a great challenge to your artistic potential. It’s not just a bird here—it’s a whole animal that looks as if it were alive. An excellent craft for boys made from natural materials.
Here we act exactly the same as with the bird.– we sculpt the base from plasticine, pack it in several layers of papier-mâché (alternating PVA glue and paper napkins). And then, after this mass has dried into a hard crust, you can paste over the dinosaur figure with spruce scales.
After plucking the cone, the cone BOTTOM remains. It looks like a flower with petals. From such cone flowers you can make a new autumn craft with your own hands - for example, a WREATH. We glue the base for the foam wreath with a chopped pine cone - just use hot glue from a gun.
You can cover such flower cones with bright gouache. To make the color of the gouache richer and shine, I recommend spraying this product with a simple hairspray after drying with gouache. The color will stick and won't stain your hands.
You can make beautiful flowers yourself by selecting the most accurate and even scales of different sizes, and laying them radially from the center. The middle of the flower can be decorated with beads or rhinestones. From such natural material, you can even make brooches in autumn style with your own hands - and wear them with a coat, or pin them on a shawl.
Flowers from cones can not only be collected into craft-wreaths, but also simply laid out on a panel. Place it on a piece of plywood with glue. This will make an excellent craft from natural material for a competition for school or kindergarten.
From whole cones You can also make some great crafts. We add not only natural material to the cones, but also other materials (colored felt, cardboard, rope, plastic, etc.).
Package of ideas No. 2
Crafts made from natural materials
WALNUTS.
In childhood, we all made boats or caps on plasticine mushrooms from nut shells. But you can go further with your walnut creations. Children will be happy to create mice or birds, and adults with skillful hands and a warm heart can create a whole world from a nut shell... Now you will see it.
In this article I want to introduce you to a very good person. Her name is Marina. A master with an attentive soul.
This is what the account page of this master looks like on the Fair of Masters website.
I really like the works of master Marina from the Fair of Masters website. With her own hands she created amazing, in its sincerity and warmth, the world of kind old women. The walnuts in the place where the flaps join are surprisingly similar to a wrinkled, smiling old woman. All that remains is to add eyes, a nose-bone and wrap everything up with a cotton scarf. And now the cunning old lady looks at you cheerfully.
We make a body from a pine cone, weave the arms from coarse paper packaging twine. We make warm felt boots from felt. Each old woman can be made with her own character. I'll run wild with a wide smile. Or silent, thoughtful, on her own mind.
Old ladies can be both summer and winter.
You can create entire worlds from natural materials in which good old ladies live and work. They themselves will keep their world clean.
And after work, they will gather over a cup of herbal tea to tell stories, make fun of each other and sing songs of their youth.
Master Marina sells her crafts. You can order her works on the master’s personal page - https://www.livemaster.ru/woods. Marina can make you a custom craft for your family and friends.
After all, how nice it is to receive as a gift the World of kind old women, which will always smell like a village CHILDHOOD for you - grandma’s pancakes, a woodpile of firewood by the barn, chickens running around the yard, the heated wood of an old bench near the fence.
Master Marina, I want to give you an idea. In one I talked about another Czech Master who created the world of ACORN PEOPLE - Dubanchikov and wrote a book with stories about them, which he illustrated with emotional scenes made from natural material. The book is published in the Czech Republic, and only in Czech. I think that many children will love our Russian book with good stories about Russian village grandmothers, illustrated by Marina’s works.
After all, it’s a real miracle to create a new world with your own hands from natural material - kind, fairy-tale, REAL. More and more houses, cozy benches, swings, carts, and carts will appear in it.
Package of ideas No. 3
Crafts made from natural materials
FAIRY HOUSES.
If you love fairy tales with fairies and magicians, then you will love the world of fairies made from natural materials. You can create cozy houses for fairies with your own hands, set up entire housing complexes for them, with ponds, parks, gardens, swings.
You can bring a man-made miracle to a school competition for crafts made from natural materials. The house where the gnome lives. Parts can be attached to plasticine, staples (from a staple gun), or glue from a hot gun.
Pieces of moss, acorn caps, scales pulled out of a cone with pliers, lichens and dry hard hanging mushrooms taken from trees in the forest. And even pieces of plants torn from indoor flower pots - any natural material will be used to build such a complex but interesting craft. The house will grow and be ennobled with natural design before your eyes.
You can take as a basis thick wooden driftwood, found in the forest. Cut off a convenient piece from it. Buy at a hardware store tinting stain for wood– and paint the wood a noble dark color. Cut from thick cardboard windows, cover them with the same stain. From popsicle sticks put together a real door, decorate a porch. Sculpt a conical roof from plasticine. Break a large pine cone with pincers or pliers on scales and lay tiles from them on the roof of a natural house.
Some elements can be sculpted made from salt dough(a glass of fine salt, a glass of flour + water (add water one spoon at a time and rub with the salted flour with your hands until a single lump similar to plasticine is formed). Roll out the dough - cut into bricks with a knife. Dry - and you will get a lot of building material for the porch , paths, fences, etc. The dough can also be painted with gouache or stain.
But the house is VERY SIMPLE. Now I’ll tell you how to make it with your own hands from the things that surround us.
- Take a durable cardboard milk or juice bag. Cutting windows in it will be the future façade of the house.
- Buy a small bag of gypsum plaster (or putty), dilute it with water and coat the façade of the house with this mixture.
- Dry and cover with whitewash or white gouache (toothpaste at best).
Make the roof out of cardboard, also apply glue to it and lay tiles from pieces of bark or pine cones. or wood chips.
Package of ideas No. 4
Applications
And of course, the most common crafts made from natural materials are applications using dry herbarium - herbs, leaves, flowers. We all made chicks or fish in an aquarium from leaves. In a special article, I give many options.
And in this article I want to show a beautiful mosaic technique of laying out dry natural material in the form of a SILHOUETTE PICTURE.
You can find a lot of ready-made silhouette templates on the Internet. If you type the phrase “silhouette of a hare picture” or another animal in the search bar.
The most important thing in such a craft is to achieve recognition - clarity of the silhouette. Therefore, you need to choose a silhouette without small details - protrusions. And if you choose one with detailed protrusions, try to ensure that the small relief detail is made with ONE WHOLE petal (like the bunny’s ears or the protrusions of its paws in the photo above).
If, when laying out the mosaic, the edge of the plant protrudes beyond the border of the silhouette, it needs to be trimmed carefully with scissors (as was done in the photo above with the cat - triangles of its ears are cut out).
Natural ideas package No. 5
Crafts from branches.
You can make beautiful crafts with your own hands from branches of different shapes and curves. Branches are possible just spread out on a white paper background repeating the outlines of a bird or animal. You can do it on paper in advance. draw a silhouette of a bird faint pencil lines. And then select branches that would lie on this drawn silhouette of a bird, repeating the curves of the drawing.
You can make crafts from natural materials secure with glue from a hot glue gun. Or make a photo craft. That is, lay out the twigs and photograph the craft, thereby immortalizing your product made from natural material in the form of a photograph.
You can fix the craft at key nodes of the branch plexus and then attach it to the base (vertical wall or horizontal shelf-stand) at these nodes, as was done in the photo below.
In addition to branches, you can use natural wood chips, pieces of bark, chips and saw cuts from logs, logs, and thick branches in your crafts. This is how the owl crafts from the photo below were implemented. Simple and interesting, made with your own hands - you can safely take it to an exhibition of autumn crafts at school or kindergarten.
The same idea can be realized from different angles and with different materials. For example, in the photo of a horse craft made from natural materials, branches, bark, and driftwood are used.
You can lay out entire mosaics, completely filling the silhouette image with natural material. The direction of the branches should repeat the direction of the details of the drawing. Place the branches in the same directions as the fur pile of the animal, or use the branches to repeat the muscle relief of the animal.
Perhaps this type of crafts made from natural materials will captivate you so much that will turn into a solid hobby with prospects for monetization into a profitable business. Why not make beautiful wooden sculptures for sale for your dacha or estate.
And if you want to use branches to create crafts from natural materials in class at school, then here are simple ideas on how this can be implemented in labor lessons for boys. Everyone is taught cut out with jigsaws plywood figures. In addition to animal figurines, you can put together frames from slats and create beautiful landscape pictures of an autumn forest with mossy branches covered with lichen.
Similar ideas can be implemented in girls' labor lessons - without plywood and a jigsaw - by making a frame from cardboard rolled into a square tube (fold 4 pieces into a frame frame, insert branches into the holes), and cut out animal silhouettes from thick corrugated packaging cardboard from old boxes and paint in gouache, if desired.
Natural crafts package No. 6
Maple and ash seeds.
Dry lobed tree seeds can be very interestingly used in a variety of DIY crafts.
You can make a mosaic craft from this natural material in the shape of a bird (because maple seeds look like feathers). You can lay out a pattern in the form of a butterfly on the glass, and thanks to the transparency of the background, it will seem that it is hovering in the air, as is done in the photo below. Maple seeds take well with watercolors, so your butterfly craft can be all the colors of the rainbow.
At school or kindergarten, you can make very simple children’s crafts from the same natural material with a base on thick cardboard. Maple seeds can be the hairstyle on a drawn human head, they can become the bushy tail of a squirrel, the feathers on the wings of an owl, or the needles on a cardboard hedgehog (as in the photo below).
And maple seeds look like dragonfly wings. Therefore, you can make simple children's crafts in the form of Coleopteran insects. For example, string beads onto a wire (this will be the body) and glue the seeds to the body using glue or plasticine. The wings can be painted with nail polish and sprinkled with glitter. The bulging eyes of a dragonfly can be cast from frozen drops of the same nail polish. The result is a beautiful, quick and simple craft made from natural materials for children.
And this same maple natural material can become the basis for funny GRAPHIC CRAFTS-DRAWINGS with a regular black marker. We paint on the missing details to the snub noses and turn the seeds laid out on a sheet of paper into interesting graphics. These are already crafts for training your imagination - a great idea for a circle on the topic “Learning to think creatively.”
I talked more about this GRAPHIC technique of using natural material in the article
Package of ideas No. 7
Crafts made from natural materials
STONES.
A simple rubble stone left over from dacha construction, or smooth river and sea stones can become the material for your own natural crafts. The stone itself can tell by its shape who it resembles. And all you have to do is take markers or gouache to bring this image to life.
If you feel like an artist in yourself, you can make complex multi-line drawings - as was done in the case of the owl craft made from stone. Or smooth, thick pebbles can look like clumsy, plump panda bears - and such a craft made from natural material will be feasible for children. First, we cover all the stones with white, dry them, and then with a black marker we draw the black details of the teddy bear on it.
Ordinary felt-tip pens draw very well on stones. After completing the general painting work, details of the drawing need to be given contours(clear boundaries) black felt-tip pen.
You can draw the silhouette of a snail or sheep on the stone yourself. And give the children the task of simply coloring the finished silhouettes, adding them with a pattern of stripes and dots or curls.
You can make a nest from dry grass and wire or other natural material. And put chicks made from stones with your own hands into this craft. Older children can color a complex picture with a chick and an open beak. For younger children, a simpler task in the form of chickens in shells will suit them.
On a piece of plywood or a round cut from a log, you can lay out a whole picture of painted stones and other natural materials. This craft is suitable for an autumn competition for school or kindergarten.
Older girls will enjoy exquisite pictures from the life of a fashionable girl - felt-tip pens, paints, stones and rhinestones.
You can use the mosaic technique to lay out a variety of characters from stones. Attach the stones with glue from a hot glue gun. The stones in the mosaic can be painted with gouache, or have their own natural color.
These can be landscape paintings made from natural materials (sea pebbles, pieces of glass ground with water, shells, etc.).
Package of ideas No. 8
Crafts made from natural materials
PORTRAITS.
A very interesting topic for crafts made from natural materials these are portraits. The face in the picture always attracts the eye. You want to look at such a craft for a long time, it has a soul, human eyes that you want to look into and read their thoughts. A portrait is a craft that looks back at you.
You can plant all the details of the portrait from natural material on glue. Or simply fold the portrait like a mosaic on a sheet of cardboard, take a photograph and brush all the details of the masterpiece off the table with your hand. And on the wall in your room there will be a photograph of a disappeared but ever-living portrait.
As an ornamental natural material, you can use stones, dry leaves, cones, seeds, and bark. For drawing thin lines, branches of different trees, straws, blades of grass.
If you work with children, then you can give them an easier task. Print the finished face on a printer. And from natural material into this craft make additions
Good luck with your work.
Olga Klishevskaya, especially for the site
Master class on making crafts using the kirigami technique “Let's protect the forest!”
Zolotaya Victoria Anatolyevna,
additional education teacher,
MOBU DOD SUITE No. 2
The work was done using the kirigami technique. Designed for ages 12-15 years.
Summer is coming soon. Many will go to the forest to pick mushrooms, berries, or just relax. The forest is one of the most wonderful creations of nature. The main enemy for the forest is fire. A very important task is to protect forests from fires. We must remember and never forget that forest fires are easier to prevent than to extinguish.
To work you will need:
colored paper,
colored cardboard,
PVA glue,
scissors,
board,
stationery knife,
copy paper,
stapler,
double-sided tape or small squares of corrugated cardboard,
base with frame, paint.
Progress:
1. Using carbon paper, transfer the drawing of the trees onto black paper. Using a stationery knife, cut out two identical parts on a board. To do this, you can staple two sheets of black paper with a stapler in advance.
2. Using carbon paper, transfer the second part of the trees onto dark green paper. Make two parts as well.
3. Using carbon paper, transfer the lower tier of the forest (flowers and herbs) onto white paper. Cut out 3 such parts, also fastening the sheets with a stapler in advance.
4. Prepare the background. Paint the top (sky) blue, and the bottom black and gray (depth of the forest). Glue the first layer of trees.
5. Glue the second part of the trees.
6. Glue the grass and flowers.
7. Cut out three horses (red, orange and yellow) from cardboard. Since cardboard is thicker than paper, each horse must be cut out separately.
8. Connect the horses together using double-sided tape or small pieces of corrugated cardboard.
9. Make a fire from the scraps after cutting out the horses, glue it to the bottom of the frame, add twigs from black paper.
10. Glue the horses so that it looks like they are jumping out of the fire.
11. Cut out a cloud with rain from dark blue cardboard, and an airplane for extinguishing fires from white cardboard. Glue it to the picture. The work is ready.
Thank you, forest, for everything:
For the silence of solitude,
For a scattering of bird voices,
And the warmth of touch,
For the air that smells like honey,
For the aroma of flowering meadows,
For everything alive. What lives
For all those whistling and singing.
FOR the selflessness of being,
For generosity to the point of self-forgetfulness.
I apologize to you
For all human sins.
Sorry for walking the ax
In your spruce twilight,
That the fire is not extinguished
He rushed by like a mad dog,
What I couldn't prevent
I'm a sneaky shot at dawn.
For everything I ask you to forgive ME,
Not to blame, but in the answer (“Thank you, Les” Nadezhda Kudashkina).
Good luck in your creativity!
This craft was made for our competition Petina Maria Mikhailovna and her children: master Varvara (4 years old) and apprentice Alisa (1 year 9 months). The Petin family lives in the Republic of Buryatia, in the city of Ulan-Ude.
Maria writes:
"Good day. We often use ideas from your site, but this is the first time we decided to take part. Our creation is called “House on the Edge of the Forest.” We made it with Varvara (my daughter is 4 years old) for the “Golden Autumn” competition in kindergarten. We were inspired by the ideas of their Internet. But since we got sick, our craft stayed at home. Varya was a little upset, because this was her first competition, and she was very passionate about creativity. That's why I jumped up in my chair when I received your letter. Hurray, our craft will still take part in the competition.”
Yes, Maria! Will accept! And thank you for sharing your ideas with other Native Path readers. And how nice it will be for girls to see their work on a real website, where other people and children read and consider it.
Craft “Forest House”: materials and tools
- cones, twigs, seeds, cereals, peas, wild apples and other autumn gifts,
- boxes,
- autumn leaves,
- PVA glue,
- plasticine,
- double sided tape,
- salty dough.
How to make a forest house with children
— For the base of the “Forest House” craft A lid from a box of paper is taken. It is covered with leaves using PVA glue and filled with peas and cereals.
— The house itself- This is a perfume box. The roof of the house is made of cardboard. A layer of plasticine is applied on top and cereal is glued on to give texture to the walls of the house.
Leaves are glued to the roof using double-sided tape.
—Hedgehogs made from plasticine and seeds.
— Vegetables and mushrooms made from salt dough. Some of them are painted with acrylic paint. You can make a lot of vegetables, and use some of them for this forest house, and the other part for games.
— Old man - forest boy made of cones and autumn leaves.
— Add pine branches, pine cones, wild apples.This is what happens.
Varya actively took part in decorating the house, made needles for hedgehogs, glued eyes for the old man, and helped sculpt and paint vegetables.
You will find more ideas for autumn crafts with children in the articles on the site:
Goals and objectives:
Give children the opportunity for self-expression and self-realization in creative activities.
Rally children in groups in the process of preparing an exhibition of paintings (compositions) from pine cones;
Develop children's artistic, aesthetic, creative abilities and imagination.
Each squad collects pine cones in the forest and uses them to create pictures in the square. In addition to the cones, you can use materials such as: dry branches, cardboard, wire, plastic bottles. It is prohibited to take fresh flowers, leaves, or mushrooms. At the appointed time, the jury comes to the square and looks at the children’s work. After which he awards the distinguished units.
Application
DIY crafts from pine cones
What to consider when creating crafts from pine cones.
Let's look at the stages of creating crafts from pine cones
The main thing is to consider some image in the natural form and texture of natural material. To create it, sometimes it is necessary to connect several different parts (cones, acorns or nuts). And, of course, it is very important to be able to somehow hold these parts together. For this we will need scissors, an awl, a needle, threads, PVA glue or Moment glue, as well as plasticine.
Not everything should be entrusted to a child. We hope that you understand this yourself. Trust your baby with what he can handle. And the rest is up to you...
The easiest and fastest way to connect parts together is with plasticine. True, this method is the least aesthetic. Plasticine can also be used to make eyes and beaks and small details missing for the intended image.
You can also fasten with toothpicks, but for this we first need to make holes in the fruits and acorns using an awl, and then insert pieces of toothpicks into the holes and secure with PVA glue for greater reliability. Unfortunately, when fruits and acorns dry out over time, toothpicks, even glued ones, can fall out.
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Cones and nuts can be joined together with Moment glue. To do this, apply glue to the gluing points on both parts and quickly press. This, on the one hand, is the most durable, reliable and aesthetic method, but it is undesirable to put glue into the hands of a child. Do not overuse it, as inhaling fumes from the glue is undesirable for it.
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You can also fasten with a needle and thread, but this is suitable for softer materials: berries, bark and leaves. This is a completely impossible task for a child. In addition, unlike cones and acorns, berries and peas dry out over time, decrease in size, and the leaves fall off. Everything flows, everything changes.
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Summary: although there are many ways to fasten parts, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. So choose for yourself, come up with your own methods and tell your friends about them.
Crafts from pine cones
Sheep made from pine cones
For the body of the sheep, take an unopened cone, and for the head, an acorn with a cap. Let's make eyes from plasticine and draw a mouth (1,2) with a felt-tip pen.
Attach the sheep's head to the bump body with plasticine (3).
Now we will attach the acorn legs (without caps) to the head with plasticine and attach the ears from pistachio shells (4).
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Cockerel made from pine cones
We attach the cones for the body and head using plasticine (1).
We will make the legs from acorns without caps, make holes in them with an awl and insert short branches-legs there, secure everything with PVA glue (2).
We attach the winged beak (half) to the head with plasticine, the scallop, and the legs to the body. We cut out the beard from a dry red leaf and secure it with glue between the scales of the cone. The cockerel is ready (3).
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And this is an idea for creating a whole composition: Peasant yard. Make it with your children.